Foibles
by cstar7777
Summary: Starting after Gathering Forces: After the events at Fort Anaxes, Kanan decides it would be best to teach Ezra how to control his emotions. What he is unaware of however is that a plan to exploit Ezra's emotions is being constructed by the Inquisitor. Will he remember Kanan's teachings, or will Ezra succumb to the emotions he is learning to control?
1. The Call

**Hello everyone, this is the first fanfiction I've written where I'm trying to make it as close to the original source material as possible. I am going to try my best to make this believable, and hearing what you guys have to say will be very helpful for me. Since I'm new to this I'm not sure how well this will play out, but I hope you guys will stick with me and enjoy it! Thank you!**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of it's characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

The Inquisitor was well aware that his failures could only be overlooked for so long. Already, this Jedi and Padawan were causing a disturbance that made the Empire look bad. But it was mostly himself that would hold this blame. This was the second known time where the two escaped when they were right in his grasp, when he had them outnumbered, when the odds should have been in his favor. However, if there was anything that would continue to drive him on this path, it was the Padawan's recent actions.

The boy had a taste of the dark side, and there was always the chance he could hunger for more.

But before his efforts could continue, he was notified of a call. His master wanted a development on his progress, and he knew he could not stretch the truth around this one. The Inquisitor made his way down the corridor of the star destroyer he currently resided within. He composed within his mind a preplanned report, with his reactions calm and carefully worded. He stopped and turned to a door, breathed in for but a moment, then the door slid open and he entered within.

The room was dark, occupied with no soul other than himself. He walked to the center, then proceeded to genuflect as a giant holoprojector was switched on. The head, the helmet, appeared within and only the sheer notion that his master's ears and eyes were upon him filled him with the perfect combination of admiration and fear.

"What is thy bidding, my master?" he had the feeling he already knew exactly what would come next.

"What is the status of your mission?"

The Pau'an had been on this mission for quite a few years, being asked for a status report like such only happened whenever his master already received poor words of his mission. He did not know who, but his master had some sort of immediate informant to him. He couldn't search for this informant even if he wanted to, because his master would know his intent before he laid his hands on them. So instead he was stuck with poor progress given without explanation.

"My mission... has had a recent turn of unexpected obstacles. A Jedi, and a Padawan. I-"

"You do not need to continue, I already know of your failures."

The Pau'an's mouth opened as if to respond, but he was cut-off before he had the chance by the deep voice of his master, "This task should not be as difficult as you make it seem." the sentence was paused by his breathing before he spoke slowly, "As a result, I am sending you one of the converted apprentices."

The Inquisitor's eyes widened and in a rare spur of broken manners he spoke, "But master, I-"

"This is not up for debate... you have two to deal with, both seemingly cunning and powerful. We cannot allow for this to continue. The apprentice will only be there to even the odds. You deal with the jedi, and they deal with the Padawan."

The Inquisitor was not pleased, but he could not show this on his face. It would only make him seem weak, which he was not. He lowered his head and spoke, "As you wish, my master."

"They shall arrive in a timely manner. This mission with Master and Padawan is your highest priority unless otherwise notified."

"Yes my master."

The holoprojecter flashed dark, and the Pau'an finally allowed his anger to show as he hissed under his breath.

* * *

Kanan was sitting on the bed in his room, with his face in his hands. He was not crying, he was openly showing his stress to the person opposite of him. Hera stood by the wall, across from Kanan, and she waited for him to compose himself. He was the one who said they needed to talk after all.

The jedi looked up at the Twi'lek and questioned, "Tseebo was delivered safely. Did anything happen along the way?"

Hera crossed her arms and replied, "Nothing with the Empire. But Tseebo left saying his 'mind was clearing up', he told me what happened to Ezra's parents."

Kanan looked up at her with curiosity and folded his hands in front of his lips, "What did happen?"  
Hera shook her head and finalized, "It's something I want to share with Ezra first. When he's ready."  
"I don't know if he'll ever be."  
"Huh?"

Hera walked over to Kanan and placed a hand on his shoulder as she sat next to him, "What happened out there? Both of you look awful."  
"Gee thanks. I was so certain I looked handsome right now."  
"Kanan."

Kanan grabbed his head, "Sorry, sorry... Ezra and I did draw the Inquisitor to us. We fought, and I lost... but Ezra came to help me out and..." Kanan's mind flashed back to waking up and seeing the anger on Ezra's face and the monster he had summoned with that anger. It distracted Kanan so much to think this way that he stopped what he was saying midway through it.

"And what?" Hera needed to know if Ezra was injured, or if Kanan was injured. Did she need to stop at a place to heal? She couldn't do anything for them if neither said what was wrong. Kanan was unmoving and distracted by something. Hera's eyes narrowed and she gave Kanan a punch to the chest. He snapped out of it and rubbed the spot saying, "what is your problem."

"What happened when Ezra came to help?"

Kanan wanted to not tell Hera anything, but the determination in her eyes made it very clear there was no way he would be getting out of this one, "Ezra opened himself to the dark side."

Hera's face lost it's hardness and quickly changed to concern while Kanan quickly reassured, "It's okay. Mostly. Ezra does not remember using that power, but I'm worried that his protectiveness is going to lead him down a path I never meant for him to go near. I... I don't know how to help him."

Kanan stood up and went to walk away, and Hera stopped him with just her voice. "Kanan. You told me the stories of the time you were a padawan and how they would teach you to control your emotions. Why don't you just teach him that?"  
"Hera, Ezra is fifteen years old and has lived on his own since he was seven without anyone to protect him or aid him. He was not raised in a sheltered environment with monks to teach you lessons from day one. I don't know if Ezra will have it come as easily to him."

The Twi'lek stood up from the bed and walked over to the door and opened it up before turning around and saying, "You won't know until you teach him."  
"Well, I'll try at least."  
"What happened to _do or do not, there is no try._"

Kanan flinched at the words and Hera brought her hand up to his face and pinched his cheek and continued, "Just remember that you two are not alone. All of us are here and we are willing to help you both in whatever way we can." Hera walked out of the room on that note and the door shut behind her. The jedi stood still for a moment before he sat on his meditation chair and began to sort through his thoughts.

* * *

Ezra was feeling better. Sabine's present made him cheer up, not just because of her thoughtfulness, but because seeing his parent's faces helped lift his spirits. Even if it was just a little while, he was not remembering that they weren't with him. He wasn't remembering the bad times. He was remembering when he was younger. When his father let him play with the family's broadcasting equipment and when his mother would make delicious food for them to eat. It was just pleasant, warm, everything just seemed right.

He walked into the main room, where he saw Zeb sitting and trying to eat food. Ezra looked to see if Chopper was around to make things worse for him and only stopped looking when he heard Zeb say, "You feeling better, kid?"

"Yeah." Ezra grinned and looked around again replying, "Where is everyone?"  
"Do I look like a map?"  
"No but you know what you do look like?"  
"What?"  
"You look like a-"  
"Ezra."

Kanan was walking from the direction of his room and over towards the two. Ezra turned his attention to Kanan and spoke, "Need something?"  
"Hey wait a minute let him finish, I wanna hear what he has to sa-"  
"I decided we're going to start training more often than I have been, just to keep up with how fast you're powers have grown."

Ezra's voice sounded like a mixture of confusion and excitement, "That's great Kanan, so am I learning how to fight with a lightsaber or-"  
"Hello kid, what do I look like exactly?"  
"No." Kanan placed a hand on his shoulder, "I know you may be concerned with learning how to fight because of what happened back there... but I need to teach you an essential Jedi lesson."  
"But what's more important tha-"  
"Kid-"

Ezra turned towards Zeb in irritation and hit the table and leaned his face up close to him, "A hairy rancor. A fuzzy, ugly, badly smelling rancor."  
"Oh really kid?"  
"Yeah rea-"  
"Ezra."

The two looked at Kanan, who's voice sounded unbelievably irritated. Kana grabbed Ezra's arm and pulled him away from the scenario and he replied, "Emotions. A jedi needs to be able to keep his emotions calm and controlled. They cannot have their actions influenced by them."

Ezra waited for a moment before he laughed and Kanan raised an eyebrow, "Is something funny?"  
"You are asking _me_, the kid who lived on the streets most of his life and had to make his decisions based purely on impulse... to not have actions influenced by emotions?"

Kanan grabbed both of Ezra's shoulders and spoke, "There's a reason why I need you to learn this. Allowing for anger and fear or irritation... or other emotions like that can draw you closer and closer to the dark side."

Ezra looked away and pushed Kanan's hands off of his shoulders, "Alright, I know where this is going to go. Fine. When are we starting?"  
"Well, we could start now if you want."  
Ezra shrugged and Kanan just decided to make that a yes and he lead him to another part of the ship.


	2. The Outset

**Thank you all so much for such nice responses. I'm new to the site and usually the places I posted fanfiction I was left alone, so it was great to read and see people are already interested in this. Yes, this was not a one-shot, I have an idea where I am going with this, it's a matter of getting to that point. Until then, I hope you guys stick around, and thank you for reading!**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of it's characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

The Ghost had begun to make it's journey to another planet. Hera had no decision yet where they should immediately go, but she knew it would be best to wait a while before heading back to Lothal. She had a place on her mind, but she wasn't sure if she should head there quiet yet. At least, not without talking it over with the rest of the ship yet.

Chopper made it's way up to Hera and beeped and buzzed. Hera rolled her eyes and replied, "Don't you have something better to do?" The droid spun it's head around and beeped in protest before she turned her body towards it and spoke, "Look, I don't have a destination right now. So go and... I don't know... bug Zeb..." the droid seemed to laugh evilly before speeding off. Hera's eyes widened as she turned back to the droid's direction and shouted, "Don't you or him break anything on my ship!"

The droid sped down the hallway and opened up the door to Zeb and Ezra's room. Ezra was not there, but Zeb was trying to take a nap. Chopper let out a mischievous rattle before zapping Zeb. The Lasat sat up and growled, "Listen ya rust bucket. I can't stay awake all the time to chase you around. Go... do something else." he collapsed back down on the bed, and the droid let a small tube out and began to shoot oil at Zeb. The Lasat growled and began chase after Chopper shouting, "Alright, you asked for it."

* * *

Kanan had brought Ezra into his room and had him sitting opposite him. They were both in meditating poses, breathing in and out slowly, and seeming to focus on something. But after a moment or two, the younger one opened up an eye and looked at the older one, then closed his eye again and took a deep breath. After a few more seconds, Kanan sighed and opened his eyes, "You're too grounded, you need to talk about something don't you?"

Ezra opened up both of his eyes and looked at him in confusion, "What do you mean I'm too grounded?"

"You're mind isn't open to the force. The technique I am teaching you is similar to connecting to others, except you are opening yourself fully to the force. In order to sense people's presence, to control your desires, or even just tell when something is wrong, you need to have an open mind." Kanan closed his eyes again but did not open them back up, "I can sense that you are closing your mind to it."

The raven haired boy shook his head and spoke, "Can I be honest with you Kanan?"

"You haven't been told to not be honest with me before..."

"I know but... look." Ezra changed from sitting on his heels to sitting cross-legged, "I just... I don't want to do something like I did back with the Inquisitor."

"That's why I'm teaching you this Ezra. It's to help clear your mind so we can talk about control."

Kanan opened his eyes and placed a hand on Ezra's shoulder, "Now, to get you to focus on something. I want you to close your eyes. Clear yourself from all other distractions except for my voice." Kanan quickly closed his eyes and Ezra felt like his presence had left the room entirely. Ezra shifted himself back into a meditating position and Kanan opened his eyes and spoke, "I want you to tell me what Sabine is doing right now."

Ezra looked at him confused, "I don't know what she's doing, I don't-"

"Using the force. Close your eyes."

Ezra closed his eyes and Kanan spoke quietly, "Let go of any thoughts or concerns that currently reside in your mind. When everything is gone, feel yourself in the room."

Kanan felt a shift in energy after a while, almost as if Ezra's presence was even stronger than usual, then he smiled and spoke, "Now, feel yourself travel. Sabine is working on something in the bay, what is she working on?"

The strong presence Kanan felt there disappeared, after a minute Ezra mumbled, "Sabine is wiring something. I'm... not sure... she's..."

The door of the room opened and loud banging was heard as Chopper ran through, the droid ran into the bed, let out a screaming beep, and then backed up into Zeb who had run in after it. Kanan stared at the two with wide eyes and took his attention away from Ezra. Zeb picked up Chopper and yelled, "I'll rewire you into a toaster." Chopper sent a shock at Zeb again causing him to drop him. Zeb kicked at Chopper and Chopper rolled behind Kanan.

"...she's working on some sort of bomb. Something I haven't seen her use yet... or maybe it is and just... isn't done being made."

Zeb looked down at Ezra and watched him, then Chopper let out another mischievous rattle and made his way towards Ezra.

Kanan glared at Chopper and spoke, "Don't you dare-"

Chopper let out his stun rod and went straight for Ezra and Zeb jumped over Ezra and landed on Chopper. Chopper let out a beep and rolled out of the room with the Lasat holding on for dear life. Kanan stood up quickly and locked the door.

Kanan sat back down and Ezra spoke, "Yeah it's probably one of her miracles." he was silent for a while before Kanan felt his presence come back and Ezra opened his eyes, "Was I right? How did I do."

The older man let out a sigh and placed his hand up to his chest, "Kid, you have no idea how well you did. Now, I want you to do that again, only stay in this room, focus on this room. When you focus on yourself and the room you are in... uh..." Kanan looked away and tried to remember if there was a word specifically for it that would help. He gave up on his search and spoke, "We'll call it center for now. Just focus on your center."

Ezra closed his eyes and Kanan felt the heavy presence again and spoke, "Now... I am going to start talking. You are going to try and have no emotional reaction to anything I say. Got it?"

"That shouldn't be too hard." Ezra spoke with a lot of confidence in his voice.

"When you were telling me what Sabine was doing, Chopper came in here and tried to stun you."

The room quickly filled with irritation and Ezra's eyes opened and he tried to stand up, "That rolling pile of-"

"Stop."

Ezra looked at Kanan and realized what was going on, Kanan crossed his arms and spoke, "How do you know I didn't just make that up on spot? What if you ran after Chopper and somehow managed to tear him apart? How do you know I didn't just say that to get a rouse out of you?"

The boy's face looked guilty and Kanan reassured him, "Don't worry, this is what we are working on. You just need to remember that words and words, and nothing more than that." Ezra nodded in response and Kana smiled, "Now, go back to your center..."

* * *

A starship made it's way towards a star destroyer. The pilots cleared each other so the transport was allowed to enter the docking bay. When the ship arrived, storm troopers were lined up behind their Pau'an commander, ready in case something were to happen. The main door of the ship opened, and a cloaked figure walked out and onto the main bay. The ship closed up and took off moments after, heading for possibly another mission.

The cloaked figure walked up to the Inquisitor, they were silent but filled with anger. The Inquisitor sensed this and spoke out, "You seem just as excited to see me as much as I am to see you."

The cloaked figure's energy seemed to change to neutral and the two walked together, the Pau'an dismissing the troopers in order for them to fulfill other duties on the ship. The Inquisitor lead the cloaked figure to a meeting room, and motioned for the figure to sit down. After they did, he took a seat himself.

"I have been working on a plan for these two jedi-"

"I thought it was a jedi and a padawan."

The voice was an androgynous voice. It was young sounding, but lacked emotion and life. The Inquisitor sneered and spoke,"My apologies Acolyte, I assumed you wouldn't ha-"

"Assuming does a lot, Inquisitor."

There was silence between the two before the Inquisitor continued, "Very well, the jedi and... the padawan seem to have favorite locations according to the data I received." he stood up from where he sat and walked over behind the figure, "Is there a more appropriate name I can call you, Acolyte."

"Only if there is a name for you, Inquisitor?

"Not that I-"

"Then it is Acolyte."

The Pau'an's fist clenched up before he spoke, "Listen, Acolyte, so long as you are under my command you will speak to me with respect. You will refer to me as master, and you will not interrupt me when I speak." there was silence between the two before the Acolyte responded, "As you wish, Master."

The Inquisitor's grin over hearing the word was largely exaggerated, he walked up next to the Acolyte and placed a hand on their shoulder and continued, "The padawan is young, his training seems to be limited, and is an emotional mess."

"So he's like any other padawan we've converted or killed as of late. What makes him a problem?"

The Inquisitor thought about the question for a moment before removing his hand from their shoulder and holding his hands behind his back as he walked, "The problem is not the summary, it's the details. The boy is powerful, and pushes even when backed into a corner. I wish to take advantage of this boy's emotions. Connections. He is born under the Empire, but I have not figured out his name."

"You haven't the means to figure out a name?"

"Well, that's what I need your help with. I cannot lure it out of him if I have to deal with his master. We are going to find the two and figure out their weaknesses, then expose them."

"Are you trying to turn the master, or is the master too far towards the light?"

The Inquisitor turned to the Acolyte and spoke, "My primary concern is converting the padawan, not the jedi. I do not even know if that is possible."

"I apologize Master, but if we aren't converting the padawan's master, then I see no point in dragging this out. Kill the master and take the boy and go from there."

"No. I cannot convert this boy by killing his master, he will only go more towards the light. I need to convert the boy with the master still alive. This is where you come in."

The Acolyte stood up from their chair and questioned, "You wish for me to redirect the boy's anger towards someone else?" The Pau'an turned towards the figure and they seemed to understand each other. The Acolyte bowed and spoke, "I will trust your judgement then, Master."

The Inquisitor gave a toothed grin at the Acolyte and lead the Acolyte out of the room to continue matters elsewhere.


	3. The Hire

**Hey everyone, I hope I don't update this too fast for people to catch up. I don't have a defined update schedule but when ideas comes I get them written down and work with it when I can. Someone private messaged me with a clip to the Path of the Jedi scene that's already been released and I know mine isn't lining up. I'm using this point to go off on my own idea, but I'm not trying to guess the season although I said I'm trying to make it as close to an episode as I can. It most likely won't be, in fact I highly doubt it. I wanted to get that out of the way now. Sorry guys!**

**If anyone has any ideas they would like to throw in and think would work in the series, you are always welcome to. But I do want you guys to know in advance that this story **_**will **_**get dark at times. I'm putting in as much light-hearted stuff as I can (I'm a rather morbid writer usually) and I hope to keep it in there, but if it slowly disappears I'm sorry. Thank you for reading!**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

The crew of the Ghost was now sitting around their holographic projector, where they originally intended to discuss what they were going to do next, but instead they were watching the HoloNet broadcast. Each and every one of them reacting to the news in some sort of way.

"These... _traitors _to the Empire must be stopped! They are terrorists, destroying property and killing innocent civilians? How long are we as a people going to stand for this?"

They all knew the killing was a stretch, if anything they weren't sure if they harmed anyone. All they had really done in the events they were describing was blow up a ship. It caused panic, but it did give a blow to the Empire's ego if anything. Ezra leaned forward towards the holoprojector and questioned, "They didn't mention anything about Tseebo... why? Wouldn't they want him back and tell people about it?"

Sabine was the first one to reply, clearly speaking from a former insider's perspective, "They wouldn't. They never publicized Tseebo's escape and they never will. It's a devastating leak of information, they don't want other rebels to hear about it." She looked away sadly, "They don't want to encourage us. They want us gone, captured, or dead..."

Hera saw everyone's spirits going down, and she decided it would be best to turn off the HoloNet news. So she did, then she looked around at everyone for a moment before speaking, "After that whole Empire Day run, we lost a lot of fuel. And since we're _officially _out of credits and Fulcrum cannot provide us with any Intel for a job, and Vizago is on Lothal, and we're not going back there right now, I..." Hera looked at Kanan with pain before saying, "We need to use the emergency supply and head to-"

"No." Kanan's voice was aggressive and then he continued, "I don't know what direction you were taking us anyway but we're using up fuel we might as well be using anyway if-"

"You want to go to Tatooine?" Ezra's voice started off quiet and puzzling before it slowly changed to confidence over what he was saying. Everyone in the room, even Chopper, looked at Ezra for a moment. Then Kanan laughed before Hera spoke, "Oh boy, Now you too? At least I know who not to throw surprise parties for."

Sabine looked from Ezra to Hera and spoke, "Wait, the kid was right? Why are we going to Tatooine I thought you hated it there."

Hera and Kanan both looked at each other, then back at Sabine and spoke simultaneously, "We do hate it … but we only go there when we have to."

Ezra raised an eyebrow and spoke, "Wait, what's wrong with Tatooine."

"Hutts like off world female Twi'leks." Kanan spoke placing a hand on Hera's shoulder, "We have a problem with her every time we try to pass through."

Hera looked around and then came up with an idea, "I could stay on the ship. Fuel re-supply shouldn't be too tough..." she looked at the company she was keeping and made an unsure noise before all of them began to defend themselves and explain their usefulness.

* * *

The ship arrived on Tatooine with Hera constantly speaking with docking bay to get clearance. While Hera got everything squared away the rest of the group waited near the exit of the ship.

"Alright, here's the plan." Kanan pointed towards Zeb and then himself, "Zeb and I will go and get transportable fuel so we have it ready on the ship. Hera will be staying here and making sure the ship itself is refueled." He looked at Ezra and Sabine before continuing, "You two will go and get other supplies we are low on. We still have plenty of food though."

The ship landed in the port and before the door opened, Hera ran over and handed Kanan and Sabine the money they would need. Ezra had a concern pop into his mind and he verbalized it, "Wait, won't the Empire recognize the ship?"

"We're on a Hutt controlled planet despite the Empire's involvement, as long as we pay the fee and don't get into any trouble we're fine." Zeb pushed Ezra and teased, "In other words, don't be yourself kid, or you'll end up in chains."

"Hey!"

"Alright Ezra, let's go." Sabine announced as she put on her helmet and left the ship. Ezra not wanting to fall behind immediately ran after her.

"Kanan, we going?" Zeb questioned. Kanan waited a moment before he threw the money at Zeb, who caught it, and Kanan replied, "Go ahead, I'll catch up."

As Zeb disappeared into the distance, Kanan went to walk out of the ship, he made it onto the exit ramp before turned to Hera and spoke, "I don't appreciate being lied to, Hera. We have credits, we haven't been at a credit loss since we started our missions with Fulcrum."

Hera looked away from Kanan pained, thought for a moment, then turned back, "I wanted to get us a good distance from Lothal for a couple of days… but there's another reason why I picked Tatooine. But I can't tell you yet, please just trust m-"

"Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt you two."

The Jedi and the pilot both turned immediately, thrown off by the voice. Someone in a robe was standing by the ramp, with the hood up and hands holding a bag, "Would your ship happen to be heading towards Naboo?"

Hera held her hands up and said, "Sorry we aren't, we don't have any business outside of the outer rim." Kanan nodded at Hera in agreement and then replied himself, "Sorry about the inconvenience, we just can't-"

"If it's credits that are the issue I can pay more than enough."

The Twi'lek and the human looked at each other again, almost having an internal conversation, before Hera spoke up, "How much are we talking?"

"Well, I can pay you 4000 credits up front, and at Naboo I can give you 6000 more. That's… 10,000 credits?"

Kanan looked at the person suspiciously and he walked closer to them, looking at them in an analyzing way, "That is a lot of credits for a simple run to Naboo, what's your catch?" the figure moved their hands up to their hood, and placed it down, revealing the face of a young, twenty year old human female. Her hair was blue, and she looked like she was clearly not from Tatooine of all places, "I have no real catch, it's just hard to find people these days that are willing to take time out of their schedule to drop people off at their home system. I got stuck here two years ago after a temporary Imperial blockade; they wanted to get the Hutts to turn over their power to the Empire. It didn't work out, but once you're stuck on Tatooine it is hard to get out." The blue haired girl realized there seemed to be a sort of privacy concern and she rose up her arms and spoke, "I have no business in your affairs, I will stay put wherever you ask me to stay and I won't prod into your business."

Hera motioned for Kanan to come back over to her, and he obeyed, "Kanan, that's a lot of money for such a small task."

"I am not comfortable leaving the outer rim, the military is more competent there."

"Then we drop the girl off at Naboo and then leave as soon as we can?"

"Maybe we shouldn't take her at all."

"Why?"

"I don't know…"

"Then let's just go with it. What could go wrong?"

Hera walked past the Jedi to come closer to the blue haired girl, Kanan turned his head slightly to see the girl out of his peripheral vision and mumbled, "I have a very bad feeling about this…"

Hera placed her hands on her hips and spoke; "We can take you to Naboo… um…"

The girl smiled and motioned to herself, "Onah. Onah Maar. And thank you so much."

"We aren't leaving just yet, since we just arrived and need to restock on a few things."

Onah clasped her hands together and almost jumped up and down, "I can wait a while longer, man this is great, I have been missing home so much."

Kanan was lost in his own thoughts but snapped out of it when he realized, "Oh wait, I need to catch up with Zeb." He ran off out of the docking bay to find the Lasat.

* * *

Sabine was walking much further ahead than Ezra, and he got himself lost in ideas for a moment before he caught up with her and tried flirting, "Soooo Sabine." Already knowing how her reaction would be, Sabine rolled her eyes behind her helmet as he spoke, "It's just the two of us alone and I bet we could find somewhere to-"

Ezra had sidestepped into a droid and the droid fell over. Ezra stopped what he was doing and helped the droid stand back up right, "Sorry about that." The droid beeped grumpily before continuing on its. Ezra mumbled under his breath, "Well that droid wasn't happy."

"Well maybe if you watched where you were going and didn't walk into sentients we wouldn't have grumpy droids."

"How can droids have such distinct personalities and thought processes when they're computers."

Sabine stopped in her path at the question and had trouble thinking of an answer. Ezra held up his hands and spoke, "You know, those stories about the clone wars and the droid armies where the droids would have casual conversations to discuss whether they should do other things when basic programming should have made them absolute killing machines like a turret?"

"You know what, kid? Maybe there are questions better left unasked."

"What, you don't know the answer?"

"Um… let's just blame it on organic error and call it a day."

Ezra and Sabine then continued on looking for whatever emergency supplies they may need.

* * *

**End note: Yeah, I added in that Ezra and Sabine part to have a small little interaction, there may be mini-sections like that from time to time. thank you for reading!**


	4. The Storm

**Thank you all so far for the support! I... have no further comment this time, thank you for still being with me~**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

The Twi'lek and the aqua blue haired human sat awkwardly on the ramp of the ship. Hera was still waiting on Kanan and Zeb, while Onah was just waiting for Hera to allow her on the ship, since Hera didn't want her in there alone.

Onah wanted to start conversation, but she didn't seem sure what to talk about without seeming rude. But fortunately Hera seemed to catch on to this and decided to introduce herself, "My name is Hera." The blue haired girl looked at her and replied, "Hera? Nice to meet you, and thank you for being willing to transport me." Onah looked around and heard Chopper beep as he rolled down the ramp to go and fix up stuff on the underbelly of the ship. She decided to ask upon seeing this, "So is it just you, the droid and your… boyfriend?"

"Boyfriend? Oh no, he's more like… the captain, while I'm the pilot. His name is Kanan, and there are three others with us as well."

Onah mumbled something under her breath quietly but then spoke up, "Seems like it would be crowded."

"It's not that bad." Hera placed her hand on the ramp and started to pat the Ghost before continuing, "She looks a lot smaller out here, but I could fit two tribes of Wookiees in here, comfortably."

"Is that so?"

Hera then began to spew out an unbelievable amount of facts about the Ghost to kill the time. Onah kept nodding and asking questions every now and again and after a long time Hera finally saw Kanan and Zeb arriving. She stopped her speech and closed it out with, "And now you know about… mmm… 10% of the facts about my ship." Hera turned to the two approaching figures with her hands on her hips stating, "Alright boys, you're late."

"Late? Don't give me any of that nonsense, Kanan wasn't much help and I did most of the work on my own."

Kanan was about to open his mouth to defend himself before a voice broke through, "Is that a Lasat?"

All three of the specters turned towards the female still sitting on the ramp. She realized she may have been rude and interrupted and she quickly stood up holding her hands up, "I'm so sorry."

"It's quite alright." Zeb replied with a small chuckle, "I get it a lot… so yer the passenger?"

"Yes sir."

The Lasat grinned at her and replied, "My name's Zeb."

Onah mumbled something inaudible but Kanan noticed it immediately, even if he didn't hear her, and he spoke up, "What did you just say, Onah?"

Onah looked up startled and looked confused for a moment before realization seemed to show on her face, "Oh, I just mumbled Zeb's name back to myself." She tilted her head slightly and replied, "It's a lot easier to remember a name that way, ya know?"

Kanan didn't seem satisfied, but he didn't keep the conversation going. He looked around and spoke up, "If we're so late, where's Ez-" he coughed quickly catching himself and looked at Onah from the corner of his eye before continuing right after the cough, "Where is everyone else?"

"Not back from the supply run. But that's more understandable since there are so many dealers. You guys just went out for fuel."

Kanan rolled his eyes and turned to the Twi'lek who just spoke, "Look I don't need your sass, Hera. I've got a lot on my mind."

Kanan pulled out his communicator and turned it out, "Specter 5 and 6, where are you? We would like you back soon."

"_We're coming Specter 1, we are caught in this huge crowd, maybe it's a podracing crowd... either way, we'll be back soon."_

In the background of Sabine, Ezra spoke up, _"Wait, podracing? Can we-"_

"Don't even think about it Specter 6, I want you guys here now."

"_Yes sir."_

Hera, Onah, and Zeb were all watching Kanan, Onah decided to speak up, "It's not podracing. It isn't a podracing day. It's probably an end-day crowd. Or maybe a storm is coming."

Hera looked at Onah and spoke up, "I certainly hope it isn't a storm. It's hard to take off during those."

"Well they are usually quick. So you don't have to worry even if one does come."

"We'd rather be out of here as soon as we can. We've got things to do."

* * *

Ezra was now purposefully lagging as Sabine pulled him along, "Stop lagging, Kanan wants us back there now. Don't make me carry you and have Kanan make your training four times harder." Ezra smirked a little bit and complained, purposefully overdramatic and whiny, "But moooooom."

Sabine stopped walking and turned to Ezra, "Don't call me that. I'm not even two standard years older than you."

Ezra went into thought for a moment and his face lit up when he came up with an idea, he watched Sabine walk a little further before he spoke up, "But wouldn't you like to see all the different colored ships?" Sabine slowed down as Ezra continued, "All the dull colors of all the ships, even the Ghost isn't all that colorful and distinct. But pods, I hear they are all different colors, and different shapes. Wouldn't it be cool just to look at the pods?"

Sabine let out an annoyed grunt before turning around, "Alright you win. We'll go for a few minutes but we need to be back at the Ghost before Kanan wonders what is taking us way longer than a crowd slowing us down."

The two made their way, still holding their bags of supplies, to where the podraces were held. But after they got there, they found out it was closed. This made both of them visibly upset and the two decided to start heading back to the Ghost after the long detour. As they walked past a stall, someone shouted at them, "Hey offworlders. You might want to find a shop to hide out. Can't you see the wind kicking up? Sandstorm is coming in."

"Karabast." Ezra mumbled under his breath.  
"I don't think you used that correctly..."  
"It might be if Kanan is mad... will we make it in time?"

"Probably not, we're pretty far away from the station now, but we're in Mos Eisley so we have places to hide anywhere… just need to look for somewhere that's…"

As Sabine spoke, Ezra heard a familiar humming from the force leading him in the direction of a small shop. He grabbed Sabine and while she questioned why he was pulling her in that direction he didn't stop until he was inside. The shop owner looked up and grumpily spoke in a language that wasn't Basic. Ezra looked in confusion but Sabine spoke back, calming the shop owner down. Sabine leaned towards Ezra and stated quietly not to disturb others in the store, "This is a crop and moisture store. He says we can hang out here until the storm passes as long as we buy something."

"Wait they sell water? I'll take that." Ezra ran up to the counter and pointed to a huge container of water and attempted to make a purchase with the shop owner. Sabine walked over to pay but quickly maneuvered as a blonde haired boy around Ezra's age nearly ran into her. He apologized and was about to run out the door before a voice spoke over them all, "Don't even think about leaving this shop if a storm is rolling in. We'll get to the restaurant afterwards, it won't close."

There was a disappointed sound from the blonde boy as he turned and complained slightly, "But Uncle Owen-"  
"Luke."

The boy sighed and walked back further into the store, Sabine began looking at some of the produce while Ezra found himself drawn over towards the blonde boy. He took a sip of his water and walked a little closer but not looking directly at him. The blonde stared at the raven-haired boy and spoke up, "Are you an offworlder?"

"Luke, don't be rude."

Ezra turned to the uncle and spoke up, "It's fine sir. Yeah, we're not from here. We just stopped in to refill on supplies and fuel. I'm guessing you are from here?"

"Yup." He looked over at his uncle and spoke quietly, "I've been working on a moisture farm my whole life and even though today's my birthday I'm still stuck selling water at a small store to make sure my family has money."

"Sounds like a lot of work."

"Hey, if it gets me to a city once a year on the deal I help lug in all this water, I'm fine with it… Where are you from exactly?"

"Lothal."

"So you're a farmer too then?"

"Um… not exactly. I don't think I'd be on Tatooine if I were a farmer. No we're… cargo… re-locators."

"Cargo re-locators? I don't know what that is but it sounds much more exciting." There was a bit of silence for a moment before the blonde held out his hand, "Luke Skywalker."

The raven-haired boy took his hand and shook it, "Ezra Bridger."

"_Oh Specter 5 and 6, where are you?"_

Sabine stopped looking at produce and since she wasn't wearing her helmet she activated her other communicator, "Yeah I know, sorry. The storm caught up with us so we pulled ourselves into a small store. When it clears we'll run over so we can get out of here."

"_I told you to hurry up earlier, what happened?"_

"And I told you, a crowd." Sabine rolled her eyes and shut off the communicator since she didn't need to hear anymore from them about it. She looked over at Ezra who seemed to be having an enthusiastic conversation with another kid his age. She smiled since he seemed like just any ordinary kid during that moment, and that at least made things seem normal for a time.

* * *

Hera, Kanan, Onah, and Zeb at this point were inside the ship to hide from the inclement weather. Hera had brought Onah to the main gathering room with the table and she was sitting down patiently looking through her bag. Kanan had just finished talking on the communicator and looked over at Hera, "Alright sweetheart. You're kids are stuck in a shop and they'll be back after the weather."

"My kids? You not taking responsibility for your pad-" she looked over at Onah who seemed focused on her bad and she spoke up, "You aren't talking responsibility for your little brother?"

Kanan was glad Hera had caught herself and he responded, "Definitely not him."

"That's the way family works." Onah mumbled, she looked up from her bag and placed credits on the table, counting out all of what she owned before smiling, "Yes! I counted right. Here are the credits up front."

Hera gathered them up and nodded at her, "Thank you very much Onah." She turned to Kanan and spoke up, "Sabine's got a good head on her shoulders, and she won't get into trouble if she's babysitting." Hera walked away and headed for another room. Kanan looked at Onah, who was still smiling at him, and he felt uneasy by it. She stopped seeing this uneasiness and seemed to apologize with just her eyes. This made Kanan shake his head and walk towards his own room.

When Onah was the only one in the main gathering room she placed the bag down and mumbled to herself, "Hera… Kanan… Sabine…. Zeb…" and then began shifting through her bag again.


	5. The Cover

**I know someone was not happy with the Luke Skywalker cameo. It was just meant to be a fun little nudge. Nothing significant is happening with him again. Also, I'm not telling y'all why Onah is remembering names. That's what reading and suspense are for~ muahahaha. Also, thank you for nearly 50 followers and 30 favorites! Have a nice day!**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

It was nearly 30 minutes later and the storm already seemed to be calming down. Sabine began to form the idea that maybe if they ran out and covered their faces the whole way they could make it to the ship while it was a slow point. But the shop owner said if they just waited a little longer it would be over and there would be no point to trying to run out. Meanwhile Ezra was still talking to Luke, mostly about the differences between Lothal and Tatooine. Ezra made mention of Empire interference with every day activities, and unconsciously made the comment, "Yeah, sometimes it just fun to mess with them and keep them on their toes."

Luke looked at him with curious eyes and looked over at his uncle quietly and asked, "Wait, you get into trouble with the Empire? Are you a rebel or something?" Ezra realized at that point what he had said and he had no other choice but to answer, "Uh, yeah."

"That's... I didn't think someone my age could even rebel... your parents let you?"

"Um..."

"Hey kid." Sabine called for Ezra and looked out the door saying, "We should start heading out now."

"Alright." Ezra turned back to Luke and replied, "It was nice meeting-"

"Wait... I know you've got a lot to do but can you answer a question first?"

"Uh, sure... what is it?"

Luke's eyes brightened up as he questioned, "What's it like being in space?"

Ezra scratched the back of his head, "I don't know how to explain it... I guess it's colder, but it's nice sometimes to just look at all of the stars."

"Have you ever piloted a ship in space?"

Ezra remembered his constant asking to pilot the Ghost and all of his denied requests so he shook his head, "I think it would be really cool when I finally did."

"Is it nice to not be stuck in one pla-"

"Luke, don't keep him from leaving, he's got as much business to get to as we do."

The blond let out a sigh but continued, "Alright." he turned from his uncle back to Ezra, "If you ever find yourself anywhere near Anchorhead on an off-work day here, ask around for Luke and maybe I'll be around."

"Alright, and if you're ever in Lothal... don't ask around for Ezra or you probably won't find me." the two laughed before Ezra picked up his bag and waved at him, "It was nice meeting you."

"Same to you!"

As Sabine and Ezra walked out of the store, Sabine looked over at Ezra and spoke up, "Well you couldn't stop talking back there... what did you talk about?"

Ezra tried to figure out a general idea before he spoke up putting on his 'man voice' "Oh ya know, things like blasters and who is tougher..." Sabine let out a quiet scoff before continuing, "Sure you did, and while you were at it was your only leverage that you could just barely fight a field cat?"

"Hey I wasn't fighting, it attacked me when my guard was down!" he got quiet before he cleared his throat, "Sooo you were watching me train with Kanan then? Someone wanted to see what I was doing?"

"Don't think anything of it, kid. It's cool watching your training sometimes. I mean, is Zeb watching you train a sign of anything."

Ezra's face went pale and he shuddered, "Point taken."

The two began to pick up the pace so they could get to the ship faster.

* * *

When they got to the ship, Kanan was waiting outside. He motioned for Sabine to go in the ship and pulled Ezra aside, "I need to ask something of you."

Ezra was thrown off for a moment before he asked, "Sure Kanan, what is it?"

Kanan brought his voice down just in case as he detailed carefully to Ezra, "We took up a transport mission, but I'm asking that you please not talk to this passenger. Maybe go in your room and practice meditating and controlling your emotions."

"Why, what's wrong with the passenger?"

Kanan thought to himself for a moment before answering, "I don't know. But there is something off about her and I'd think it'd be best if we kept at least you out of the loop of people she knows. It's just to be safe... can you do this for me?"

Ezra nodded as he entered the ship, he avoided the main room and went straight to him and Zeb's room without finding the passenger. When everything was all set, the ship took off.

* * *

After leaving the planets atmosphere and jumping to light speed, Onah started shaking with some sort of anticipation. Kanan walked in seeing her, but didn't know if it was anticipation at first and questioned, "Are you alright?"

Onah looked up at Kanan and smiled, "Yeah, I'm just excited about coming home." a loud noise came from the other room and Onah jumped and looked in the direction of the noise, "What was that?"

"Probably Chopper doing something... that droid likes to cause trouble."

Onah raised an eyebrow, "A troublemaking droid? Couldn't you program it to not cause so much trouble."

Kanan almost looked offended as he spoke up, "I couldn't reprogram Chopper, it adds character."

The noise happened again and Kanan looked over to see Chopper trying to get into Ezra and Zeb's room. He would get the door open and try to enter, but either Ezra or Zeb would shut the door immediately. Kanan rolled his eyes at the sight and spoke up, "Don't you have something else you could do rather than bother those two?" Chopper beeped and rolled off towards the cockpit.

Onah had stood up and watched the scene as well at that point and she fixed her hair as she looked over at Kanan, "Your droid likes going after two specific people?"

"Why do you care?" Kanan asked almost aggressively before he realized he was even speaking and he took in a deep breath, "No no, I'm sorry that was rude of me."

Onah looked a little pained as she went back over to sit down, "No it's fine. I shouldn't have been in your business. I promised as part of the deal I would stay out of it."

As soon as she finished saying this, the entire ship felt like it was suddenly braking despite them being in hyperspace. Onah fell forward but caught herself on the table and Kanan grabbed onto the ladder nearby. Things seemed to not be stilling and Kanan shouted, "Hera?!" it took nearly a minute for the ship to calm down, leaving the two humans breathing heavily.

The internal comm turned on for the ship immediately as Hera spoke up, "I need everyone in the cockpit _now_!_._"

Kanan ran off over towards the cockpit with Onah following behind.

* * *

"The coordinates I had set for Naboo tried to go straight through a fleet of Imperial star destroyers. There is a heavy amount of them around Naboo for whatever reason and we are close enough… but we can't be in hyperspace anymore."

Sabine was all covered in a purple paint, from head to toe, and she yelled, "YOU COULDN'T HAVE JUST GOTTEN US OUT OF HYPERSPACE NORMALLY? I THOUGHT WE WERE DY-"

"Relax adiik."

"Ad'ika!"

"Hey, I tried, I won't try Mandalorian again. I was getting to the part about the hyperdrive." Hera turned to Kanan with a look of distress, "I don't know what happened but for whatever reason I couldn't get out of my coordinate lock, so I had to autopilot it out. I would have warned but it was a more immediate thing."

There was a moment of silence while Kanan cleared his thoughts before he turned towards Onah, "Do you know why there's a fleet?"

"Okay first off, I've been on _Tatooine _for two years, why would I know what the Empire's business is in Naboo? Second, why does it matter if there is an Imperial fleet there? I have residency on Naboo, they can't redirect us away from there. It isn't a lie to say I'm coming from Tatooine where there aren't official transports sanctioned by the Empire. They are more forgiving than you'd think."

That's when all the Specters looked at each other and remembered that the guest did not understand their predicament with the Empire. They weren't so sure if they were going to be able to keep it that way so Hera looked at Kanan and he nodded at her before Hera spoke up, "We… don't exactly have the best relationship with the Empire right now."

There was silence for a moment, Onah seemed to process the information and she didn't look too happy but the response she had wasn't exactly expected, "I don't care."

Zeb jumped a bit and spoke up, "Sorry?"

"I didn't hire you all as a transport because you were best friends with the Empire or anything, I hired you because you all looked reliable. I could have left two years ago if I wasn't as picky about it, and you all seemed to fit the bill." Onah shifted her blue hair from her face, "Just go anyway."

"We can't. We are-"

"Whatever your problem is, if we get boarded, I'll take care of it."

"Credits aren't exactly a convincing fact-"

"I said_ I would take care of it." _Onah's voice sounded aggressive. The girl who had been smiling and shaking with anticipation before was gone and replaced with something completely different. She took a deep breath and spoke up, "I'll pay you 2,000 more credits than promised if you keep going for Naboo, because apparently there is a catch now."

Kanan walked up to Onah and crossed his arms, "And if they board us, what are you going to do exactly?"

"Don't worry about it unless it happens, Kanan." Onah's face went back to its kind disposition. Kanan did not like the change of her face and was about to speak up before Hera spoke up, "We'll vote on it. And I'm for it." Kanan turned to Hera with disbelief before Sabine added in, "I'm not. I don't know what you think you can do to _take care of it _Onah, but I don't see us being reasoned with easily."

Kanan went to speak up but was cut off by Zeb, "I don't see why we can't keep going. We said we'd get her home and I'd feel bad if we had to turn around and drop her back off at Tatooine."

The Jedi let out an annoyed sound and spoke up, "So it's a tie." Hera turned to Chopper and the beeping of approval went to Hera, who smiled at pat the droid on the head and Kanan spoke up, "No, Chopper shouldn't be the one who has the final say. I'll go ask the sick one and see what he thinks."

"Uh-uh, you don't get to go in there are make a speech about your opinion on the matter. He isn't here to understand that this-"

"Are you only doing this for credits? I'm sorry that we can't get Onah home but we can't risk this."

There was silence for a moment before Onah covered her face. Kanan knew just for the actions exactly what this girl was going to do and he let out an annoyed grunt, "Don't start crying please. I really don't like the sound of a girl crying."

"I-I'm not crying, I'm just…."

"Just go!" Kanan looked directly at Hera and basically ordered her before he turned and left the cockpit.

* * *

Onah had stayed in the cockpit with Hera after the meeting, both of the women felt guilty in their own ways after what happened. Hera knew at least that Kanan could be mediating and calming down but Onah didn't have that assurance and just assumed she made him angry with her.

As they approached Naboo, a Star Destroyer began calling the Ghost.

"_This is Imperial Stardestroyer Naysayer, please identify yourself freighter."_

both the lifeforms in the cockpit looked at each other and Hera spoke up, using the ship name since at least that information was not collected yet by the Empire, "This is the Ghost. We are transporting a resident of Naboo from Tatooine. We are just here to drop them off and leave."

"_Acknowledged. However, boarding will be required before you may enter the Naboo system. If you cooperate we will be in and out in no time."_

Hera shook her head and let go of the communicator after the transmission ended and she spoke up, "I hope they just search the cargo area. We can't afford anywhere else…"

Onah looked out at the ship and over at the communicator. Her face quickly changed pained before she stood up and spoke up smiling, "I said I would deal with it, didn't I?" she looked at Hera and mumbled, "I'll help you out but you need to not freak out on me."

"Why would I-"

"Sh."

Onah turned the communicator on and her voice changed to a cold and serious tone, "There will not be any need for boarding, Naysayer."

"_And under what authority do you speak?"_

Hera looked at Onah's face, which was as hard as her voice was, "This is Agent Maar, DSII-263."


	6. The Agent

**Faster updates due to schedule free-up. Woo. Also after Friday I might disappear and not be able to update as regularly as I have been. Sorry guys, that's life.**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

Onah's face was stone; even if no one other than Hera would actually see her face it was the way she conversed with the Star Destroyer that made her change her disposition. Hera was staring at her, wide-eyed and trying to keep her mouth from gaping open. Onah had paused, to wait for some sort of response, but after it did not come, Onah continued.

"I am requesting priority access to Naboo with no interference. This freighter will also be permitted to leave the system without interference. If I find out somehow that my orders are not met I will be sure to report to your commanding officer and see why such a failure occurred. Understood?"

There was almost no break between her orders as the comm responded, _"Acknowledged. Welcome back to Naboo, Agent Maar. Your command has been processed and there will be no further interference for yourself or your transport."_

"Your compliance is appreciated." Onah let go of the comm and sat back over in her chair. She stared out the window and Naboo for a minute before she looked over at Hera, who seemed to be holding back something. Onah let out a sigh and turned.

"Alright, I know you want to, freak out."

"You work for the Empire?!"

"Yes ma'am."

"Why-"

"Don't bother making up some convoluted explanation. I'll save you the time. I have not lied to you, my name is still Onah Maar, and I was still stuck on Tatooine for two years. I was sent out under a diplomatic mission to attempt to convince the Hutts to turn more power over to the Empire. When negotiations didn't work, we attempted to blockade. The smuggling game in Tatooine is pretty intense, and no matter what we did we couldn't keep up with it. So the blockade failed, and they left me there under the hopes the Hutts would somehow change their mind. It didn't happen, and they never came to pick me up." Onah saw Hera's face didn't seem reassured in the slightest, "I don't want to know what your crew's issue with the Empire is. I don't care what your relationship is. If you are smugglers I don't need to know that. I just wanted to get home, and you looked reliable enough."

Onah closed her eyes and looked out towards Naboo, "I do this job because it's the only branch of the Empire where I can remain a pacifist, and still be employed."

"You are a pacifist and you work under the Empire. Sadly dear, you are no longer a pacifist." Hera growled under her breath. Onah glared at her and spoke up, "Some of us need to get by in these times and the best we can do is justify our actions. If you are angry with me because of who I am associated with, fine. But we are already at Naboo, and we are still under a paid agreement."

"I don't want your blood money."

"_Dear_." The blue haired girl retorted mocking the way Hera had said it earlier, "All money is blood money these days." Onah held her head and continued, "You can hate me all you want later but can we agree on something?"

"Why would I make a deal with you?"

"Your captain is already not fond of me, you can tell him about me after but until you drop me off, can we keep it between us? I don't want to fight with you people anymore."

Hera eyed Onah out of the corner of her eye as she steered the ship into Naboo's atmosphere, "I guess I can do that much for you, but that's all you get from me…"

* * *

As Hera piloted to the port, Onah had stood up and decided to walk back to the main room to get her bag. As she walked, she heard bickering in one of the rooms. The voice of Zeb rang through and was quickly replied with a young voice of a teen. Onah realized at that moment Kanan's brother. With curiosity taking its toll, Onah tried to open the door, but found it to be locked.

As she walked back to the main room with the table, she heard Chopper enter the room from another part of the ship. After they came closer, she crouched down by the droid and mumbled, "Hey there, Chopper." the droid beeped in response and Onah smiled, then her face turned to concern as she brought her hand up to her face, "I need to tell you something Chopper, and you probably won't like it but… I think it is best that you know."

Chopper beeped and Onah looked around to see if anyone was present before she whispered, "I heard Zeb call you an example of _how not to program a droid. _He was talking about how he was coming up with a way to reprogram you and wipe your memory."

Chopper made a noise that almost sounded distressed and they beeped as they ran over to Zeb's room and forced it open. Zeb had run over and shut the door, but then Chopper sent a shock through the door and smoke appeared, the droid shoved the door open halfway and Zeb tried to shut it, only for the door to be stuck halfway.

In an interesting twist of events, the droid entered the room, quarreled with the Lasat, and then a loud noise was heard followed by Zeb screaming. The Lasat ran out of the room being chased by Chopper and ran towards the main hangar.

Onah put on a face of confusion and concern and walked over to where the whole event had taken place. She looked at the door with all the burn marks and asked herself out loud, "What was all that about?" she saw out of the corner of her eyes a figure and she looked over to see the raven-haired teen sitting on the top bunk of a bunk bed. Onah held up her hands and spoke up, "I'm sorry, I just saw the smoke and heard all the noise and wanted to know what happened here… are you Kanan's brother?"

Ezra stared at her but didn't reply, so Onah questioned curiously, "Are you alright? Kanan said you were sick and I know you were out the in sandstorm. Did you get a fever from that? I have medicine fo-"

Ezra let out a loud cough and replied with a [fake] scratchy voice, "I'm not interested, but thank you," as he started to lie back down on the bed.

The blue haired girl placed her hands on her hips and commented, "Well at least drink some water, you sound like you swallowed or inhaled a lot of sand."

"I'll take the advice then."

Onah smiled and backed up from the door, "Well, I hope you feel better… um…" she snapped her fingers trying to remember and mumbled, "Shoot, Hera told me earlier… what was…"

Ezra looked over at her and figured if Hera had already said it, there was no harm in answering, "Ezra."

"Ezra." Onah waved at him and walked back to the main room, "Unless Zeb told someone already I'll let them know about the door."

* * *

After the ship was docked in Theed, Onah held her bag and waited patiently for Hera to arrive at the door. The ramp was opened up for the ship and Onah walked down it and waited. When Hera got there, Onah finally stated, "I live not too far from here. If you wait for 10 minutes or so I'll be back with the second part of the pay. Then you guys can go with no problem." Onah smiled and Hera looked disgusted, but before she could say anything Kanan spoke up, "Fine, we will stick around."

Onah turned around and ran towards her home. Hera waited for a moment before she shook her head, "Kanan, I need to tell you something."

"Does it involve Star Destroyers on the way back?"

"No hun, it involves Onah."

Onah continued running for about two more minutes before she turned into an alleyway and walked for a little while longer. She opened up her bag and pulled out a small holoprojector and turned it on. After waiting a bit, a cloaked figure appeared on the other end: It was the Acolyte that was with the Inquisitor.

"This is Agent Maar of Imperial Intelligence. Your intel about outer rim space ports was accurate and I found the ship that matched your description. You had said there was a Lasat on board, and while I initially thought I might have had the wrong ship, a Lasat had appeared."

"You are definitely the first I.I. to report a Lasat. Which planet did you get transported to?"

"Naboo."

"And your mission?"

"I believe I have all of their first names. I did not dare to delve too deep and go for last names."

The Acolyte was silent for a moment before replying, "Tell me their names and I will cross match them with my superior. If the information you have matches, we will fully compensate your payment and give more. If not… we shall see. Go and pay whatever secondary fee you promised them and we will go from here."

Onah did not know what title to call the Acolyte so she just responded with, "As you command." She gave out the list of names detailing each person who the name matched with, and then after she was done the transmission ended. The blue haired girl looked back in her bag and opened up another compartment containing more credits and she counted them out and placed them in her pockets and left the bag in the alleyway.

* * *

Only Hera was left outside of the ship when Onah had returned. Onah was breathing heavily when she came back and mumbled, "It's hard to breathe after all that running. Here." Onah pulled the credits out of her pocket and counted them out and placed them in Hera's hand. As soon as she was done, Onah backed off and replied, "Thank you for everything, you were so helpful to me." And she turned around and left. Hera stared at the credits in her hand in disgust before she turned around and went back into the ship.

As she made her way back to the cockpit a voice rung out, "You told her your name?!"

"She had said Hera already told her and I don't understand the problem with letting her know. It's not like I detailed my personal life."

"I told you not to talk to her."

"Can you stop yelling at me Kanan? I thought you were teaching me to control my emotions but right now you are out of control."

Kanan walked out of the room and saw Hera and spoke up, "Hera. What does the I.I. in D.S.I.I mean? Please tell me it isn't-"

Hera closed her eyes not believing she hadn't caught on beforehand and mumbled, "Imperial Intelligence… I missed that big detail…"

* * *

The Acolyte made their way down the hallway of a Star Destroyer and opened the door to bridge. The Inquisitor stood there in military style looking intently outside at other ships. The Acolyte made their way closer with a datapad in their hand and spoke up, "I am sorry to disrupt you Master, but I have something important to confirm."

"Please, keep stalling rather than cutting to the chase, I have nothing better to do with my time." The Acolyte held up the datapad towards the Inquisitor and on it was a picture of the raven-haired padawan they were after. The Acolyte the replied coldly, "This is Ezra Bridger of Lothal. I believe this is the one you are looking for."

The Inquisitor examined the picture and smiled an evil, toothed smile.


	7. The History

**Purpalz Miner: " actually 'adiik' means 'little girl' when you take out one 'i' from it."**

**-Hey, I tried, I won't use mando'a again… hurhurhur [I thought it just meant 'girl' not 'little girl']**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

They were not sure whether or not they should go back to Lothal now that they all felt like their privacy was violated. Kanan had made a speech about how the next time he felt something wrong they should probably go with it, but Hera retorted by mentioning how no one could have possibly known whether or not she was a spy beforehand. In fact, they were lucky enough to get the hints they had.

Agent Maar, which was what they were all referring to Onah as now seeing as they no longer felt they could be on a first name basis, could have kept quiet the whole time and not revealed to them at all that she worked for Imperial Intelligence.

Kanan was finally beginning to chill out and accept what was done was done. They couldn't go back and fix it… they had to keep moving. And in turn, Kanan was back with Ezra in his room doing meditation training again.

Things had been going relatively smoothly, and Kanan could tell Ezra had been practicing this on his own time, which for some reason he expected Ezra to have not. Kanan began to think of more extreme things to tell Ezra, to see his reaction.

"Picture this scene: Zeb is in a heated fight with Agent Kallus, and Zeb is winning. You and I are fighting the Inquisitor at the same time and holding our own. Zeb finally knocks Kallus back and goes in for one more charge, and the Inquisitor turns his back on us and runs after Zeb with a strike ready to kill Zeb. What do you want to do?" Ezra was struggling with this thought and Kanan spoke calmly back, "Remember, your initial reaction. What do you feel is right?"

"I try to pull the Inquisitor from Zeb… maybe using the Force… maybe rope… I don't know, just enough for Zeb to realize what is going on and get out of there."

Kanan smiled at this response but then continued with a straight face, "Lets say… you do pull the Inquisitor away, and while Zeb notices this, Kallus uses this to his advantage and kills Zeb… wha-"

Ezra's face scrunched up and the thought of it caused Ezra's to tighten up his fist, the Force around the two of them seemed to shift in reaction to this thought, and the padawan mumbled, "I'd kill Kallus right back. Life for a li-"

"Ezra." Kanan spoke with a strict tone. Ezra's eyes opened up, they were watered from even the notion of someone dying. Ezra's face was pained as he brought his knees up to his chest and mumbled, "I'm sorry I know it's not the Jedi way to think… But how can a Jedi watch someone they care about die and not have a reaction to it?"

Kanan shook his head, "We do have reactions, Ezra. We just don't react with revenge. Revenge does not feel as fulfilling as you may think."

"Are you speaking from experience or were you just told that?"

Kanan looked away from Ezra after he asked that question and thought about it before shaking his head, "Not in the eye-for-an-eye kind of way. And I don't necessarily think of it as revenge."

"Uh-huh... Your point isn't coming across, Master."

"I really don't think anything I'm saying is difficult to understand."

Ezra stood up and went to leave the room and Kanan stood up saying, "We aren't done yet."

"With how this conversation is going, I don't think we'll ever be done." Ezra turned around back at Kanan with irritation clearly sprawled about his face, "If the Empire came and killed any of them, how would you react? Would you just let it pass by as if nothing happened?"

"No, but I wouldn't try and kill the person responsible."

Ezra shook his head and opened the door and left the room with a finalizing comment, "I have difficulty believing that, Master."

Kanan just stared at the door his padawan had exited from and let out an annoyed sigh before closing his eyes and attempting to meditate.

* * *

Ezra had eventually made his way to the cockpit; he was sitting with Hera but not talking to her. They seemed to have already talked about something, perhaps Ezra's disagreements with Kanan, but that conversation was long over.

Ezra wasn't in a bad mood either; he was just distanced as he looked out at the colors of moving through hyperspace. Hera on the other hand looked uneasy and completely out of calm composure. It was most likely still from the encounter with Agent Maar but it wasn't verbalized. She also wanted to talk, and kept looking over at Ezra with words ready, and then lost.

After quite some time she finally spoke up, "Ezra. I never told you what I wanted to tell you after the whole thing at Fort Anaxes… it's important and it is just for you, but only if your ready for it."

Ezra looked over towards Hera and shrugged, "Sure… but what is it about?"

Hera looked Ezra directly in his blue-eyes and answered, "Tseebo told me what happened to your parents."

The raven-haired teen stared at her for a long time with no clear reaction on his face, then it changed to a pained expression as he shook his head, "Not right now… but…" Ezra looked away from Hera and stared back out the cockpit window, "Thank you for letting me know you do know… if I'm ready to know I'll ask."

The silence stayed in the cockpit for a little while longer before Ezra sat up, "Do you ever get bored of just sitting up here in the cockpit? A little music would be nice wouldn't it?"

"I don't really listen to music, but every now and again Kanan pulls out some of the hold music-disks out of back compartment over there." Hera pointed behind her at a small drawer near the door. Ezra stood up and went over to it and opened it up. He dusted off the disks and brought them over, her squinted as he tried to read some of the script but everything was in different languages.

Ezra eventually came across a disk with something in basic and read out loud, "The Best of Bena Bara Bakk?"

"Oh no put that trash away now bef-"

The sound of horns filled the air in almost a celebration call, and then drums followed before it kicked in to some sort of slow reedy sounds. A voice began to sing in a very smooth and mysterious sounding Twi'leki. Ezra and Hera looked at each other awkwardly and Hera spoke up, "Change it now."

"Yes ma'am." Ezra motioned to grab the disk but was interrupted when a door opened and Kanan walked in shouting, "Is that my Bena Bara Bakk disk?! Man I love this song."

Ezra moved his hand from changing the disk and turned to Kanan scratching his head, "Yeah, it's um… interesting."

"I haven't listened to this disk since we got stuck in Coruscant for that week or so."

Hera rolled her eyes and mumbled, "Worst week of my life."

Ezra raised an eyebrow, "Why what happened?"

"Mr. Romance flirted with every female sentient he set his sights on. But hey, it stopped his drinking habit at least."

"Kanan's a flirt?"

"Hello, I'm still here."

"Not as much as he used to be but every now and again I see it surface and make sure it goes away." Hera purposefully elbowed Kanan in the chest, since he was now standing between the chairs of Ezra and Hera.

Kanan rubbed his chest and spoke up, "Oh come on Hera, even you flirt every now and again."

"_I'm _not a Jedi." Hera teased and Ezra raised an eyebrow and questioned, "Wait… Jedi aren't supposed to flirt?"

Kanan looked at Ezra and then back at Hera, who looked at Kanan expectantly. He let out a distressed noise before replying, "N-no… I mean… There was a rule against marriage in the Order but we're talking about a younger Kanan." Kanan stooped the music disk and looked through the other ones. Ezra was waiting for a continuation, and Kanan looked at him out of the corner of his eye, "What?"

"What… is the younger Kanan different than this Kanan? Did the younger Kanan have _trouble with his emotions?"_

"Don't psychoanalyze me." Kanan growled before he put on another music disk, which was playing some sort of faster song with a lot more drums and horns but did not contain a singer.

Hera snapped her fingers to the beat and then pointed at Kanan, "He called you out good you know."

"Hush it sweetheart I wasn't asking for your opinion."

Hera set the ship to some coordinates and turned towards the master and the padawan, "You two need to trust each other more."

Ezra and Kanan looked at each other and then back at Hera and stated in unison, "We do trust each other."

"Not enough to talk about your pasts."

Kanan rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, "It is pointless to dwell on the past and worry about the future, all that should matter is the now and what you are doing to keep going."

"Ya know Kanan, that is actually the best advice you have given me." Ezra spoke up before Kanan straightened up and his face turned to shock as he replied, "It is?"

"No it isn't!" Hera spoke up and continued, "You are right about it being pointless to dwell on the past but you are saying that and not actually doing it. Maybe if you both tried telling each other about yourselves it would result in you both being able to understand where the other is coming from."

Kanan and Ezra looked at each other once more almost as if Hera spoke a language the two didn't understand and she let out a sigh and turned back to piloting the ship, "You know what, forget it. I'm sure your methods are working just fine."

There was more silence before Kanan spoke up, "I had given up the Jedi ways."

Ezra shook his head and looked at Kanan, "What?"

"After Order 66 came, I went into hiding. I tried to keep my faith strong for a couple of years but it didn't work out. So I put away my training and decided to just work odd jobs to make a living. I had no intention of going back, but then I met Hera and she inspired me to begin rebelling, and that's when I realized I couldn't hide who I really was anymore. I've made mistakes in the past, and I've tried to learn from them. It's why I'm trying to teach you how to avoid making those mistakes, so you don't have to go through what I did." Kanan was standing up tall with his arms still crossed; he wasn't looking Ezra or Hera in the eye. He didn't seem to really be looking at anything at all.

Ezra was still staring at Kanan and replied, "Kanan, when we talked about revenge earlier… it's not something I think of right here… but when I picture myself in the moment. I've fought other street-rats on Lothal. I-I've caused trouble for stormtroopers for years and it was an every man for himself kind of thing. Ya know, ya need to eat to live… and when you don't have credits you need to steal to eat? I'm not; used to the idea of hypothetical stuff… if I'm out there and I have to choose between starving for another week and shooting a stormtrooper in the leg… I'm going to shoot the stormtrooper Kanan. Would I want to right now? No. I can think of so many other ways to get things to survive but when you are actually in that position…" Ezra looked away from Kanan, "I'm trying to think like a Jedi would, I am, but it's so hard to."

Kanan placed a hand on Ezra's shoulder and grinned, "Kid, we've got time to work on it. I'm not expecting you to change overnight. It's my job to teach you this… I may not be the best teacher but I'll be the best I can be."

* * *

The Inquisitor and the Acolyte stood attentive at a computer, trying to scan for the one thing they couldn't lock down. It had been hours at this point, and the Inquisitor finally spoke in his analytical voice, "I am not surprised that we cannot find a 'Kanan' that matches the description we were given. We are wasting our time." The Inquisitor turned towards the Acolyte, "If this Jedi was a padawan during the Republic, then he could easy have changed his name and hid among the other humans around the galaxy."

He stepped back and walked slowly over to the datapad and shifted through it, passing by Ezra Bridger, Sabine Wren, Garazeb Orrelios, and Hera Syndulla. He stopped he got to a blank page with just Kanan on it and a sketch based on the details the Inquisitor had remembered. He tapped at the picture and spoke coldly, "I am not worried, I will send in a report to Coruscant and look up the padawans of Depa Billaba and see what I can do. The information we have gained on the other four rebels is enough to satisfy for now. But please, do tell me… where did you acquire these names from?"

The Acolyte stepped forward and replied emotionless, "I was informed of Imperial Intelligence agents already having spies and agents scattered across the outer rim. I sent out a full order to any of the disembarked agents."

The Inquisitor made a noise of disapproval and continued, "Oh dear, we'll have to keep this from our close companions from the Imperial Security Bureau now won't we?"

"I am not concerned about a petty rivalry between ISB and II. Our mission-"

"Acolyte." The Inquisitor shook their head, "Are you not aware that our assistants for this mission... this ship we are currently located on... is ISB property? We like to keep our partners employed."

"Do not be melodramatic, Master. They are not going to lose their jobs because I decided to pick Imperial Intelligence due to their scattered location. They will just lose pride, and they will gain it back."

The Inquisitor's golden gaze did not change from its disapproving state until it changed back to a cool and calm disposition, "Very well. But how about in the future we keep our affairs with the Imperial Security Bureau."

"If you are choosing for likability over productivity, then-"

The Inquisitor's hand shot up and smacked the Acolyte across the head. The Acolyte did not continue speaking, and the Inquisitor grinned, "Two words. All I ask is for two words… then you can leave and I will come and get you when you are needed."

The Acolyte bowed and spoke with a bit of pain in their voice, "Yes, Master." Then they turned and left the room.

The Inquisitor held back up the datapad and shifted back to the padawan and spoke to himself, "Ezra Bridger, you are definitely one of the more interesting padawans I have encountered… but lets see if you are as easy to break as the others…"

* * *

Edit: IF ANY OF YOU HAPPENED TO READ THIS BEFORE THIS EDIT, I MESSED UP SOME INFORMATION BAD AND HAD IT EDITED AND FIXED. SORRY ABOUT THAT :/


	8. The Outline

**We broke 5,000 views! woo! Thank you guys so much for all the nice reviews it really does mean a lot to me. If you have any ideas for anything feel free to throw them out. Thank you!**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

Sabine was staring at one of the walls of her room in curiosity, and slight irritation. She was not afraid to paint the walls, she enjoyed it and put a lot of time into her artwork. This is why the current situation bothered her.

Since the door was wide open, a curious Zeb had walked by and noticed Sabine standing there looking unproductive and bothered. He walked a little closer to the door and spoke up, "You alright, Sabine?"

Sabine pointed at the wall, it was covered in paintings but there was a huge amount of purple paint surrounding the shape of what Zeb could only assume was Sabine. Zeb stared at it and let out a laugh, "Is that what happened when we braked in hyperspace? I was wondering why you were all covered in purple."

"This isn't funny Zeb! It's covering some of my favorite creations. And I no longer have purple paint." Sabine rubbed some of the remaining purple paint on her armor and looked back up at the outline, "And I need that purple paint too."

Zeb seemed to go into a position where he would be thinking of a resolution, and Sabine waited intently to see what he had to say. But in the end he motioned away and walked out, "It's your problem now."

"Hey!" Sabine stuck her head out the door and shouted at him, "Get back in here you smelly cat." Zeb just waved and spoke up, "Do something _artsy _with your special touch you'll figure something out."

"I'll shave your beard off!" Sabine yelled back and turned around only to jump at the sight of Ezra right behind her. She held a hand up to her chest and took a recovery breath before stating, "Kid, don't sneak up on me like that."

"What did Zeb do to make you want to shave his beard off?" Ezra placed his hands on his hips and spoke, "I'll shave it off for you."

Sabine walked back in her room and continued, "Don't actually shave off his beard, that would just be wrong." she turned back to the outline and Ezra walked in and followed her sight to see what she was looking at.

"Oh so that's why you were covered in purpl-"

"I don't want to go over this again. I just want to figure out something to fix this."

Ezra leaned against the doorframe and suggested, "You could fill it in with more purple paint and draw something on top of it."

"I'm out of purple paint."

"Then fill it in with blue?"

"It would just look odd."

"Then paint it black?"

"That would look worse than blue."

The raven-haired teen held up his arms and shrugged in defeat, "Hey, I'm trying my best to help you out."

"I know you are but you're thinking of this on a basic level…"

"Well I'm not an artist so I can't put myself in to your art… mindset. You're an amazing artist and I really think you could learn to make this work. You're great at things like this, add in that extra touch like you usually do."

"Put myself in art…"Sabine mumbled to herself before her eyes brightened up and she smiled, "Thank you, Ezra, it means a lot" Sabine then pointed to a spot near another one of the walls in her room and requested, "Could you just stand over here for a minute?"

"Sure." Ezra obediently walked over to the spot, grinning as if he had just won something. Sabine grabbed his shoulders and moved him a bit then checked the angle as she spoke, "You know, you may not have been with us for that long, but I really do feel like this group wouldn't be the same without you."

"You really think so?" Ezra questioned, and Sabine looked him in the eyes and replied, "Yes."

Sabine walked over to a table and pulled out a color chart, she flipped through it and looked at Ezra straight in the eyes and continued, "We may be in more trouble with the Empire than usual lately, but you've helped us out and have proven your worth."

Ezra scratched the back of his head and spoke blushing, "Thanks Sabine, it means a lot to hear that from you."

Sabine turned Ezra around so he was facing a wall and questioned, "What do you think of this painting?"

The wall contained a scene of a landscape that Ezra had never seen before. He looked at it closer and answered, "I have no idea what it is, but it looks cool… what is it?"

Behind the unaware Ezra, Sabine was sorting through a bunch of different colors of paint trying to match it to the shade of blue she circled on the color chart. When she found it she replied to Ezra, "It's a forest… you don't know what a forest is?"

Ezra turned to look at her but Sabine quickly continued so he wouldn't turn towards her, "It's the forests of Kashyyyk. Wookiee homeland, which has had more deforestation lately than I would like… it makes me sad seeing some of those giant trees cut down… but deforesters have been a problem there since way before the Empire."

"Well, it's amazing looking, and I bet it would be cool to see first hand."

"Hey kid, can you look at this?"

Ezra turned around just in time for Sabine to throw the blue paint at him. Ezra shut his eyes tight as the paint made contact, making an outlined shape of himself behind him on the wall. He stood there for a few seconds to recover and opened his eyes to see Sabine grinning, "It looks perfect."

"Sabine!"

"What? Oh, yeah… I'm going to throw paint at you."

"A little late?"

Ezra turned around to see the outline and could see where he was standing and was surprised it came out so clean. Behind him Sabine had started laughing and Ezra turned back, "What's so funny?"

"Your back, it's normal colored but in front you're all blue. It's just…" Sabine lost herself in laughs and Ezra walked up to her with an unamused face. When Sabine looked up again, Ezra placed his palm right at the center of her face. When he removed his hand, Ezra's handprint was left on her face. "There, now we're even."

The two teens examined their paint for a little while before they laughed at each other. They both heard Zeb march by the room and they both grabbed the same idea at the same time, "Let's get Zeb."

* * *

"Fulcrum called offering a mission back on Lothal." Hera and Kanan were both in the cockpit together still; while Ezra had left after their heartfelt discussion the two adults had stayed exactly where they were. The music was still playing in the background, but it was a lot quieter. Hera looked at Kanan out of the corner of her eye and spoke, "You think it's safe to go back?"

"Depends… is it a mission in a city? I'd like to avoid cities for a while just in case." Hera shook her head and replied, "We can stay on the outskirts. It's… kind of like a Vizago mission… it's a weapon interruption mission. Based on the intel we had from Tseebo, one of the plans detailed the creation of updated blasters for the low-ranked stormtroopers. If we intercept it and destroy it we can put the Empire behind for months."

Kanan thought about it and replied unserious, "Sounds crazy, convoluted, and dangerous."

"Aaaand?"

"I see no problem with it, but only if we stay out of the cities."

"It's alright Kanan, we'd be intercepting their transportation from one city to another. And because they are avoiding black-market thieves they're going to take the long way rather than the roads. In other words, it's ours for the taking."

Kanan leaned back in the chair and placed his arms behind his head, "Then let's go for it."

* * *

When the Ghost arrived at the Lothal system, at first they were nervous that they'd be shot on sight. However the blockade that was there during Empire Day was gone, which meant they were good to go.

Hera flew the ship into the atmosphere and told Chopper to intercept a scanner to see if they could find a transmission from the cargo transport. It didn't take too long for him to succeed and Hera called the group to fill them in, when they were all there Ezra, Sabine, and Zeb were all still cleaning up paint on their faces. Kanan raised an eyebrow and questioned, "What happened to you three?"

Sabine grinned mischievously, "Inspiration."

Ezra nodded with her and added, "Genius."

Zeb growled, "Kidnapping." His beard still had dried on red paint and he kept trying to get it out.

"Alright then…" Hera added under her breath before continuing, "So the mission is pretty simple, stop the transports and get those weapons destroyed. We aren't selling these off. We don't have much time though and I feel like if we wait too long we'll miss our shot."

"Are we doing a high drop off then?"

"Yes."

"Great…"

"Drop off, what's a drop off?" Ezra looked at everyone in confusion and Hera smiled, "It's not hard to catch on to, I drop you off."

"Okay… what's so bad about."

"She _drops _us off."

Ezra looked confused before Zeb slapped him on the back, "It's okay kid, you'll find out soon enough."

Ezra, Kanan, Sabine, and Zeb all stood in the cargo bay of the ship. They were all getting ready to go and placing small mechanisms on their arms. Ezra was confused why they weren't at the door of the ship but he stood at the specific square of the floor where they told Ezra to stay put.

Zeb put a small watch-like object on Ezra's arm and spoke up, "Push the button."

Ezra cautiously moved his hand over it and pressed the button and a shield generated around him. Everyone else did the same thing and the internal comm. Announced loudly, "Alright, ten seconds."

"We should get to the door right?"

"Nah, lets wait a few seconds, kid." Zeb hummed something before he heard a clicking noise ten seconds later and saluted the teen, "See you on the ground!"

"Wha-"

In the middle of his question the floor of the ship opened up and the four rebels began plummeting down to the grassy fields of Lothal.


	9. The Confrontation

**I love you guys, I just want you to know that. Thank you so much!**

**Guest- "****Liked that scene with Sabine and Ezra. There's not a lot of character development for Sabine in the show, so I'd love to see more of it here. Will there be any development in Ezra and Sabines relationship?"**

**Yes definitely. There is going to be more development for all characters and all of their relationships, but Ezra and Sabine is definitely a relationship I'm working on developing. I'm not sure if it's going to go in the **_**love **_**direction yet though. One of the problems with writing for Sabine is that (like Zeb) we don't know an awful lot about their backstories other than basic "I left the academy" and "The Empire killed my people". I am most likely going to get to a point where I start making up my own backstories for them [not like Kanan where I actually went and read A New Dawn to gauge his personality and then made up small events for the sake of emphasizing his backstory].**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

There were two transports, but both were the size of ants from where they were. They kept approaching though, or rather the rebels were approaching the transports. From their angle it looked like the transports were too far to the south for them to reach them, but they weren't out yet.

Meanwhile, Ezra was screaming at the top of his lungs. While the other three seemed calm and collected despite the fact they were plummeting to a potential death. Kanan looked over at Ezra from where he was and watched as Ezra flailed in the air in a freakout. He knew he should have told Ezra what they were doing beforehand but a sadistic part of him had wanted to see this freakout. Now they needed Ezra calm and it wasn't happening.

Kanan closed his eyes and focused on Ezra, and after a few seconds Ezra stopped screaming and looked over at Kanan. He took a deep breath and looked back down at the ground, which was now closer, the transports were just about to land under him and he heard someone shout, "Kid, it'll feel a lot better for you if you roll on impact!"

When the four hit the transports, all of them rolled and the shields that they had on disappeared as they seemed to break all of their falls. Every single one of them stood there for quite a bit of time to catch their breaths since the fall took a lot more energy than any of them expected. Ezra sat down on the roof of the transport and yelled, "What now?!"

Sabine looked over at Ezra, but since she had her helmet on he wasn't able to make eye contact with her, "Well we certainly made a loud noise… just give it a seco-" then a blaster broke the silence.

Ezra quickly got up on his feet and Kanan pulled out his blaster and shot at a stormtrooper who was peaking out the side of transport. Kanan pointed to one transport and yelled, "Ezra and Zeb, stop that one. Sabine and I will take this one."

The orders were quickly followed as Ezra and Zeb jumped over to the other transport and made their way towards the front of it. Zeb tore off the hatch and motioned for Ezra to jump in. Zeb followed quickly afterwards and the two knocked out all of the troopers inside the front part.

"Alright Ez', hope ya know how to drive 'cause I'm going after the bucketheads in the back."

Ezra went to speak up about something but Zeb had already made a run for it to the other part of the transport. Ezra got on the wheel and started to turn the transport around and stop.

Meanwhile on the other transport, Kanan and Sabine were still on the roof fighting off the stormtroopers that kept coming out to knock them off the roof. Since all four of the rebels had landed on that particular transport the 'troopers were alerted faster. Sabine finally got to the hatch and dropped a bomb inside and closed it back up. After hearing the explosion she opened up the hatch, and waited for the smoke to clear.

"Stop the transport, I'll keep holding them off." Kanan shouted over his shoulder.

Sabine jumped inside the transport and went over to the wheel and started to turn it around, but felt someone grab her helmet and slam it into the control board. Dazed temporarily due to the impact Sabine lifted up her leg and kicked behind her. She felt her leg grabbed but she didn't let that stop her as the turned around and threw a full force punch at their head. She then reached for her belt and pulled out a blaster and fired it right at their gut.

After watching them fall to the ground Sabine looked back out to try and focus on driving and saw a speeder rapidly approaching the front of the transport. Sabine rapidly turned the transport in one direction but she saw something black fly out of the speeder and head towards it. While she could not make out what it was, the thud on the roof indicated it had landed. The Mandalorian watched the speeder head in the direction of Ezra and Zeb's transport. She was about to turn around fully when she heard Kanan, _"Specter 5, stop this transport now. I repeat, stop the transport NOW."_

Sabine obeyed the order and stopped the transport almost instantly. She heard a thud and the screaming of the breaks, and somewhere in the background she thought she heard an explosion but she shook it off as if it was the sound of the transport stopping.

"_Specters 4 and 6 please respond. Specters 4 and 6, please respond!"_

After waiting a few seconds to hear if anything was going on, she got up and ran to the back to go and destroy the cargo but stopped and fell to the floor when she saw a red lightsaber pierce through the roof and almost hit her head. She stared wide-eyed and inched her way back to the door and hoped Kanan was handling things fine on his end. When she got to the crates there were two 'troopers still on board. She fought them without too much of a problem and began to set up bombs to blow up the crates.

* * *

Zeb was having the time of his life bashing the stormtroopers into walls and knocking them out. There were so many with the cargo it was hard to believe that they were all here just to protect their new blasters. Zeb finally cleared house and pulled out some detonation devices to destroy the crates when he felt the ship breaking instantly and moving towards the left.

"_Specter 5, stop this transport now. I repeat, stop the transport NOW."_

Zeb listened to the comm wondering what on Lothal was happening, but he decided to continue going and he went to place the first detonator, and was interrupted when he heard Ezra yelling, "Get out of the transport!"

"Kid what are you-"

Ezra grabbed Zeb and opened up the back door and jumped, the transport was still moving and they both had to roll out to avoid getting too hurt. As soon as they did however the transport exploded behind them.

"_Specters 4 and 6 please respond. Specters 4 and 6, please respond!"_

* * *

Kanan finally found himself done with attacking the stormtroopers and was about to go into the cargo hold to destroy the blasters when he heard a speeder approaching, as well as the feeling of something coming. He turned to see a speeder that was covered up, but opened up slightly as a figure jumped from the speeder.

Landing on the roof with more grace than Kanan could believe was the Inquisitor. As he stood straight he pulled out his red glowing lightsaber and spoke, "Long time no see, Jedi"

Kanan held up his comm and shouted, "Specter 5, stop this transport now. I repeat, stop the transport NOW."

Kanan dropped down to hold on but the Inquisitor had stayed standing, the instant breaking caused the Inquisitor to lose his footing for but a moment before he ducked down waiting patiently. As the transport slowed, Kanan looked over at the other transport to see something jump off the speeder the Inquisitor was on, and watched it collide with the transport causing quite an explosion.

Kanan stared in horror as he pulled out his comm,"Specters 4 and 6 please respond. Specters 4 and 6, please respond!" he watched as the Inquisitor lunged at him, since was still down, and narrowly dodged him watching as the red lightsaber stabbed through the roof of the transport. Kanan took out his lightsaber and turned to jump off the transport and head towards Zeb and Ezra's but didn't make it before the Inquisitor swung at him. "Is your padawan on that transport over there? What a shame. If he survives I'll leave him my condolences."

"Condolences?"

"Over his master's death."

The two force-users continued their battle on the roof, Kanan trying to push the Inquisitor away so he could get to the other transport while the Inquisitor intentionally kept him on the roof. At one point, Kanan kicked at the Inquisitor's legs and managed to trip him, which seemed to not amuse him.

Kanan heard the explosion below him and knew Sabine had done her job. The Inquisitor looked over at the other transport and raised an eyebrow, "Your padawan has a red lightsaber?"

Kanan looked at him confused and pushed at the Inquisitor, "No."

"Well then it looks like someone is trying to take my job."

Kanan turned to look and see where the Inquisitor was distracted only to see a red, glowing lightsaber in the distance. At that moment Kanan began to worry about Ezra and Zeb even more, if they were all right after the explosion how long would they last with another force-user.

As Kanan was distracted and unfocused, even if it was just for a brief moment, and the Inquisitor used that moment to his advantage. He swung the saber at the Jedi and Kanan sensed it just in time for him to roll out of the way and off of the transport. He felt a burning sensation for a moment against his back, but ignored it as he started running towards the wrecked transport as fast as he could. The Inquisitor threw his lightsaber at Kanan who narrowly dodged it, then turned around quickly to push the Inquisitor back as far as he could.

As Kanan ran, he turned on the communicator shouting, "Specter 2 we need you to pick us all up as soon as possible."

"_I'm on my way, Specter 1."_

* * *

Ezra stayed down on the ground after the explosion for a moment just in case. He looked towards Zeb to see if he was all right and the Lasat was already beginning to stand up. He turned towards the teen and growled, "Is it so hard to drive, kid?!"

"Hey! It's not my fault. I couldn't turn the transport in time since the speeder was coming after us too fast."

"I could've driven it better than you."

"Then maybe yo-"

"No matter who drove that transport the result was inevitable."

The last comment came out of nowhere and caused Ezra to jump to his feet and for Zeb to pull up his bo-rifle and look for the one who spoke. Out of the smoke came a dark figure that at first looked like they were part of the smoke until they were close enough. The figure held a blaster in the direction of the two and spoke, "You rebels are under arrest."

Zeb charged at the figure, who in turn took a shot at Zeb. The Lasat dodged the blast and took a swing at them and knocked the figure back. Taking a deep breath the figure put away the blaster and started to visibly breathe heavier.

Ezra felt something wrong, something building up that disrupted his own energies. The figure started charging at the Lasat, with no weapon drawn. Zeb stabbed at the figure and the figure took the shock and just barely grabbed Zeb's arm. They pulled him closer until they managed to hold on to the bo-rifle in equal share.

"I have never had the honor of fighting a Lasat. I have met a few and heard of their battle stories, but I never dreamed I'd be part of a story." The figure's breathing got heavier as they let out a laugh, "One of them I saw a few weeks ago, a prisoner of your war with the Empire since information still needed to be gathered. They refused to talk so I… got them to talk." The figure turned the bow-rifle closer to Zeb and questioned, "Do you happen to know a Tiraden Orrelios?"

Zeb's eyes widened at the name and he mumbled, "Den?"

The figure took a shot at Zeb and let him collapse to the ground before turning to Ezra, the energies of the figure seemed to die down and their emotions subdued, "And now it's just you and me."

Ezra pulled out the slingshot and shot at the figure; there was a tsking noise after the shots hit the figure, "Have you considered putting the child's toy away and perhaps getting something better?"

The raven-haired boy looked over at Zeb and saw the bo-rifle on the ground. He felt the force flow through him and he took a jump over the figure and over to Zeb. He took hold of the bow-rifle, which he could barely hold, and shot at the figure. Ezra's opponent flew back and held where they were impacted. The figure stayed down for a bit and Ezra turned back and shook Zeb, "Come on big guy. Get up! We've gotta move!"

Ezra felt the energies becoming even more off balanced, and he looked over towards the figure, which rose up from the ground and walked closer to the two. Ezra watched as the figure raised their arm up and spoke with such an angry tone it make him feel uneasy, "Back away from the Lasat, Ezra Bridger, or he dies while you watch." They adjusted something to their arm before pulling out a lightsaber and pointing it towards Ezra.

While Ezra had so many questions he could have asked at that moment, he didn't ask them. Instead he felt fear for his friend, and fear towards this new foe. He walked away from Zeb with his hands up.

* * *

**And that was when the writer left everyone with a cliffhanger and disappeared for a couple of days. It was the end of the everyday update schedule.**


	10. The Impression

***MAJOR CHANGE* I normally wouldn't do something this big, since I'm usually content with what I do, and I know it's only been an hour or so since I've updated and I know people have reviewed already (especially involving this fact) but I'm reuploading the chapter so people can see this. I made a relationship change: Tiraden is Zeb's little brother. Not his son. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. One is because I think it would be more realistic to the show, and the second is because I don't see Zeb necessarily as a dad. I thought it would work out at first but I keep looking it over and it just doesn't feel right to me... I don't know... I'm going with my gut this time. Den is still 15 though, there's a reason for that. Sorry everyone for the inconvenience.**

* * *

**Guest: "PLEASE UPDATE! YOU'RE KILLING ME!"**

**Well since I can't afford to go to jail for manslaughter…**

**Haha I'm just kidding, I'm not home but I've got enough time to update. Answer some of the questions people have had for this chapter… if the chapter doesn't clear it up for the reader then feel free to ask but I should cover most of them this chapter (this story is mostly pre-planned anyway… aha…. fun fact…)**

**Oh and in case I miss you all, Merry Christmas(what do you give a Wookiee for Christmas if he already owns a comb?)!**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

The figure began to walk closer to Ezra, but made sure the teen was further and further away from Zeb. When Ezra was finally where the figure wanted him they spoke up, "Good boy, if you cooperate we shouldn't have any more problems."

"Who _are _you? How do you know who I-"

"Did I say you could ask questions?" The figure waiting for Ezra to respond but after the silence they just let out a sigh ,"Well here's the question: do you want me to call you Ezra or do you want me to not refer to you by name at all?"

"Is this some kind of a joke?"

"I'll take that as a 'no' to Ezra. Alright then boy." The figure motioned their hand over towards Zeb and lifted him up in the air, "You can call me Vice. Or Acolyte. Although I would much prefer the former."

"Is that your name?"

"Is that really your priority concern as I hold your friend midair? No matter." the figure began to crush their hand into a fist, and Zeb started to let out a scream.

"Zeb!" Ezra moved his hand up with the slingshot and Vice spoke, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. I could kill… _Zeb_ before you even let go of that slingshot."

"You're bluffing."

"Am I?" Vice began their action once more, Zeb let out another scream and Ezra just shouted, "Please stop!"

"Friends are such a weakness aren't they? You can't fight me and you can't run away. As of this moment you are under a self-allowed control.

Ezra's face was pained before he yelled, "What do you want!?"

"To leave an impression."

"I don't like you."

"I didn't say I wanted to leave a good impression." Vice shifted their hand to torture Zeb a third time but noticed something out of the corner of their eye. Vice let go of Zeb and moved their lightsaber into a defensive position just for it to collide with a blue one.

Vice's sense of humor and emotion filled voice had all but disappeared as they spoke, "Oh look, it's the master." Kanan and Vice seemed to parry for a moment before Kanan yelled, "Get Zeb out of here!"

"Where's Sabine?"

Vice attacked Kanan a couple of times while he defended, but Kanan felt like he wasn't even trying. it threw him off for a moment as he replied, "I uh… she's right behind me?"

"The jedi left someone behind?" Vice commented monotonously and looked over towards the distance, "I hope that wasn't a bad idea."

Ezra helped Zeb up and tried to get out of the area, but turned to see a lightsaber spinning in his direction. Ezra dropped to the ground and struggled to get back up again. Kanan continued his fight with Vice, and found out he was besting them. He tried to sense what was going on with them before he came to a realization, "You're… you're just a kid?"

"Well, you're nosy."

Kanan pushed Vice back and turned to go help Ezra with Zeb. The Inquisitor could be seen heading at them from the distance, and Kanan held his hand out and used the force to grab Zeb's bo-rifle. As they were running, the front of a transport began heading straight at them. The three stopped when they saw their mandalorian companion driving slower so they could jump on, "Thanks for leaving me behind with the Inquisitor!"

"Thanks for getting us a ride!" Kanan and Ezra both jumped into the transport carrying Zeb and Sabine drove off as fast as she could.

Vice ran after the transport temporarily, and watched as the Inquisitor's red lightsaber came boomeranging back. They let the lightsaber land into their hand and shut it off. As Vice looked off into the distance, they saw the Inquisitor approaching. They walked over as fast as they could and handed the Pau'an their lightsaber.

"And how did it go, Acolyte?"

"I'd say that went better than I expected, Master."

The two force-sensitives watched as a ship entered the atmosphere and picked the rebels up and disappeared back up into space. The Inquisitor turned to the Acolyte and continued, "What did you do with the Lasat."

"I made up a tale based on the report about the other Orrelios. Even if I am somehow glanced over, Garazeb won't let them forget me."

The Inquisitor called up a ship to pick the two up, then placed his hands behind his back, "I made a change of plans… I am no longer affiliated with you."

Vice was silent for quite some time before replying with a hint of confusion in their voice, "And Lord Vader allowed that?"

"I did not mean officially. I meant the rebels simply will not know we are connected."

A ship began to fly in and dock as Vice questioned, "And why, if I may ask, the sudden change of plan?"

The Inquisitor did not reply until the ship was docked and he was about to climb the ramp. He stopped halfway up the ramp and turned to the hooded figure, "It will all fall into place soon, Acolyte, just continue to trust my judgement." he turned then to completely enter the ship as Vice bowed and followed the Pau'an replying, "As you wish, Master."

* * *

All of the specters were in Ezra and Zeb's room. Chopper was helping Hera and Kanan provide medical assistance to Zeb while Ezra and Sabine exchanged concerned looks in the back of the room. After a lot of time spent, they all gathered together to discuss things and Hera looked pained as she spoke, "Although you guys went through a lot down there… it was a successful op."

Ezra crossed his arms and spoke up with an angry tone, "In what ways was that successful?"

"You destroyed the blasters and put the stormtrooper advancement in technology back for several months."

Kanan felt something building up and Kanan knew it was Ezra, he turned to him and quickly spoke up, "Ezra. Zeb getting hurt was not your fault."

"Yes it was, Kanan! I-I couldn't do anything to help Zeb!" Ezra looked like he was ready to cry and he replied choked up, "He could have died back there!"

"But he didn't, and that's what matters. Not what could have happened, what did happen."

Sabine looked around at everyone who was distressed at what to talk about and she spoke up, "We didn't know the Inquisitor was going to show up, and his… who was that guy?"

"Not someone with the Inquisitor." Kanan spoke up, he thought about what he was saying for a moment before continuing, "At least that's how it seemed… the Inquisitor didn't know who they were."

"Could he have been acting?" Sabine questioned.

"I don't know…"

Ezra kept looking over at Zeb with guilt shown clearly on his face. Hera noticed his concern and she smiled, "He'll be fine."

"Physically…" Ezra mumbled under his breath. He looked up at his top bunk and jumped up into it and laid down, "Well, I'm getting some shut eye."

"Now?"

"After all that?"

"Ezra." Kanan's voice seemed to be the one that ended up taking control of conversation, "We have more things to worry about than sleep."

"Says you." Ezra mumbled as he turned to face away from the group.

"You don't want to talk about the… other…"

"Their name is Vice." Ezra spoke up over his shoulder, then he continued, "And that's all I know about them."

The group wanted to continue discussion somehow, get everyone in on what everyone else knew, but as someone was about to question Zeb grumbled and started to wake up.

"Zeb!"

"Ow, don't shout."

Ezra sat up in his bunk and hung over it to look at Zeb. The Lasat began to sit up slowly, cringing every time he moved his torso. He looked at Ezra's head hanging upside-down and chuckled as he spoke up, "Hanging around?"

Ezra stuck out his tongue and climbed out of his bunk and back with the rest of the group. Kanan stepped forward and looked at Zeb with concern, "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, got winded a little but nothing too bad."

Ezra spoke up involuntarily, "You got knocked out and tortured and you're _alright_?"

The group turned towards Ezra angrily who covered his mouth and apologized. Zeb chuckled sadly and looked away from the group, "Yeah, I'm alright. I could rip the ears off a gundark."

"Then would you mind filling us in on what happened? Ezra's being undescr-"

"Who's Tiraden?"

The group turned again to Ezra but this time with a look of confusion. Zeb had sat up quickly and hit his head on the bottom of the bed and shouted, "Karabast!" which caused the group to turn back to him. He rubbed his head and spoke up, "Well kid, you're getting a little too personal."

"Sorry… it's just… you lost your guard after they mentioned that name."

Hera turned back to Zeb and spoke up, "You don't need to tell us Zeb it's fi-"

"My brother."

The group was quiet at the words and Kanan shook his head and leaned closer, "I'm sorry Lasat, I don't think I heard you right… I could have sworn I heard-"

"Tiraden Orrelios is my younger brother."

Everyone looked at each other before turning back to Zeb, "You have a brother?!"

Zeb held his head and grunted, "Ugh yeah, just stop yelling." the group seemed in complete shock over this little revelation and Zeb let out a chuckle, "Yeah I have a brother, what's so surprising about that?"

"We thought you would have at least mentioned it." Kanan commented

"It's been years, Kanan. I assumed that he was one of the many casualties… I didn't expect them to keep a 15 year old for information… he was just a kid… what would a kid know?"

Ezra backed away from the group and ran off out of the room. The group turned just in time to see the door shut behind him.

* * *

Kanan had gone back to his room to be alone for a little bit and felt the irritation on his back again from earlier. He pulled off his shirt and walked over to a mirror and turned to examine a burn mark that remained there. At least until it healed, Kanan would not be able to forget when he narrowly missed being sliced up to go and protect his padawan.

The feeling he felt at that moment, as he stared at the mark, made him wonder if that feeling of urgency that he felt was what his master felt when she ran to save him.

He heard the door open and quickly put back on his shirt before turning to the door, "Could you knock first?"

Hera stood in the doorway and replied jokingly, "What, so I won't catch you with your shirt off?" she didn't hear Kanan's response and her face went serious, "I guess that was a worse mix-up than I thought… are you alright?"

"I'm not the one you should be after… maybe you need to ask Ezra."

"Maybe you do."

"I know I have to, I'm just giving him some time to himself. He needs to be able to work out some things on his own after all."

Hera turned to leave and Kanan spoke up, "Ezra and I are going to steal the Phantom tomorrow… we need to work on something I was waiting on, but now that we have potentially two people after us I need to get started sooner."

"Sure… but what exactly are you up to?"

Kanan let out a sigh and replied, "He's gonna build his own lightsaber."


	11. The Pep-Talk

***MAJOR CHANGE*I made this announcement at the beginning of Chapter 10 in an edit, but for people who missed this huge change: I made a relationship change: Tiraden is Zeb's little brother. Not his son. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. One is because I think it would be more realistic to the show, and the second is because I don't see Zeb necessarily as a dad. I thought it would work out at first but I keep looking it over and it just doesn't feel right to me... I don't know... I'm going with my gut this time. Den is still 15 though, there's a reason for that. Sorry everyone for the inconvenience.**

* * *

**Onto the AN:**

**Stormcutter684- "By the way, I thought Zeb was around 30?"**

**I figure answering this question will clear up any conflicts that may arrive in the future. I had gotten Zeb's age from Wookieepedia. For the massive amount of fan-updates it has, I do not know where the age was confirmed but it seemed reasonable to me. If something can't be found in the show or in interviews I usually find myself running at Wookieepedia. I know it may not be the most reliable source since it can be fan-updated but I tend to run with it. If something seems off like an age or an affiliation, it's probably something I found on Wookieepedia._ Look guys_ _I did almost 7 hours of research for the chapters The Cover and The Agent sometimes I just want to click on wookieepedia and run._**

**Well after that long message, I leave you with Christmas wishes again, and continue on.**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

Ezra was hiding in his room. After he had run out during the meeting, he knew someone would come looking for him and hoped the last place they would all look was the room he just ran from. He sat on his bunk and laid hidden under a blanket, focusing in on his thoughts. He found himself heavily dwelling on Vice. How did they know his name? Why did they want to leave an impression?

He heard the door slide open and he held his breath. He peaked out lightly to see Zeb step in and step around almost as if he was looking for something. It was probably him he was looking for. He didn't want to confront him yet, he didn't want to hurt Zeb anymore than he already had. At the same time, he knew Zeb needed to talk to Ezra to clear things up. He could feel the emotional conflict. Would it be better for them both to talk or not talk at all?

_**Friends are such a weakness, aren't they?**_

Ezra shot up involuntarily at the words, causing Zeb to jump and make a startled noise. After he calmed down, Zeb spoke up, "There you are ya Lothrat, I've been looking for ya."

The teen made a motion as if to fall back down into the covers and pretend Zeb never saw him. But to no avail. Zeb picked Ezra up out of the bed and held onto him by one foot. Ezra struggled shouting, "Hey put me down!"

"Only if ya listen t' me!"

"Okay, okay!"

Zeb dropped Ezra and he rolled and stayed seated on the floor. Zeb sat on the his bunk so it was easier for him to look Ezra in the eyes and he spoke, "I'm sorry."

The raven-haired teen's blue eyes went wide with confusion as he commented, "For what?"

"For making you feel like my messing up was your fault. Also, what I said earlier about a kid not knowing anything…"

"The kid part didn't get to me, it was… because I brought up your old wounds."

Zeb chuckled and added, "Hey, if the wound never healed properly it's no wonder it reopened. 'sides, you didn't do anything, it was that man...woman… what even was that?"

"I just know their name is Vice."

"Well, they're the one who brought up Den, you just forced me t' admit I wasn't… well… okay."

Ezra stood up off the floor and turned towards Zeb fully, "When you were knocked out, I couldn't help you."

"I know, kid."

"Vice tortured you and I couldn't do anything to stop them."

"I _know, _kid."

"I stood there staring like those Fyrnocks when the sun is out."

"_Kid_."

"I feel like I failed you."

"You did fail me."

Ezra stopped and stared at the Lasat pained as Zeb continued, "You failed t' help me out, you let them torture me, you were worried if you tried anything I would die. You're a loser, it's over, you've failed blah blah blah _shut up_!"

The teen backed away as Zeb stood up and started poking Ezra violently in the chest, "Do I need to start calling you _infant._"

"No..."

"You're just learning how to be a jedi and control your emotions and do great magical force things. You're _just _learning. You're gonna make mistakes, you're gonna have to learn from them rather than sulk. We're still alive aren't we?" Zeb waited for Ezra to reply, "Well?!"

"Yeah…"

"None of us are captured by the Empire?"

"Yeah."

"And we're gonna walk away from this and know what _not _t' do. Right?"

"Yeah."

"Then put away the face."

Ezra's face showed the same sadness, but with a hint of confusion at what Zeb was saying, "What face?"

Zeb pinched Ezra's cheek as the teen tried to get out of his grasp, "This face, the pity-party face, the one ya were doing all Empire day. It's gross and annoying and doesn't accomplish anything 'cept making ya look like a fool." he let go of Ezra and pushed him back, "And toughen up, be a man. Give me a reason t' promote ya back to kid. Got it, infant?"

Ezra rolled his eyes and put on a sarcastic smile, "Yes sir."

"Are you making fun of me?"

"Well I mean… its just… if I'm a man I'm promoted back to kid?"

"That's right."

Ezra opened his mouth to question it but Zeb turned him around, "Now get out there and find Kanan. He was looking for ya too." Zeb opened the door and pushed him out and was about to close the door before Ezra spoke up, "Wait!"

"What?"

Ezra scratched the back of his head and asked nervously, "If you don't mind me asking, what was...um...is Tiraden like?"

Zeb stopped for a moment and thought about it before answering, "Well he would be almost 20 by now… but when I last saw him… he was a lot like you. Taller, hairier… he didn't sit around for hours on end with the pity-party-"

"Face. Yeah yeah, you aren't gonna let that go are you?"

"I will when you lose the face."

At that note, Zeb shut the door on Ezra. Feeling in a strangely better mood after that session, Ezra let out a chuckle and whistled to himself while looking around for Kanan.

* * *

The next day came with Kanan packing a few more things into the Phantom while Era still curiously tried to figure out what was going on. His master had told him they would be doing something training related for a couple of days while the rest of the crew did some petty rebellions (ones that wouldn't get them caught in the Empire's sights). However, Kanan had yet to tell him exactly _what _they were doing. The want to know was eating him up, and he kept asking Hera to tell since he knew Kanan wouldn't, but she kept replying, "I don't know, and even if I did know, it's not my place to tell you."

They got their last items into place and said their "take cares" and such on. As the Phantom took off, Kanan looked out of the corner of his eye to see Ezra constantly shifting and sometimes looking over at Kanan impatiently waiting for him to tell. The jedi let out a chuckle and spoke up, "Geez, you're excited. I haven't even told you what we're doing yet. What if it is something not so exciting?"

"What do you mean?"

"We're just looking for parts to build something."

"Oh." Ezra's eyes shifted around trying to process what was said before he stood up and walked over next to the pilot chair, "What are we building? A part of the Ghost? A droid? Um… something the Imperials wouldn't like?"

"Oh yes, its definitely something the Imperials wouldn't like."

"Is it a special blaster? Something that'll freak them out when it's used?"

"A… huh…" Kanan thought about it for a moment and grinned mischievously at the idea. Why not drag out this surprise longer. He turned to Ezra, "Yes, that's exactly it. But we're only making one of them, you'll see how hard it is to get these supplies."

Kanan had set the coordinates so they were in one of the more deserted and left alone parts of Lothal. When the two of them docked Kanan motioned Ezra over to the chairs so they were sitting across from each other, "I can very easily find some of the metals and blaster frames needed for this but there's one part to this li-" Kanan quickly caught himself and coughed a fake cough and continued, "Blaster… that isn't as easy to find. And since we're going through focus training, I wanted you to find it. Besides, it's something a youngling…" Kanan thought about what he was saying for a moment, but eased his thoughts remembering that Ezra was pretty much a youngling-padawan at this point, "...can connect with easier than a more trained jedi."

Ezra raised an eyebrow as he leaned more towards Kanan, "What are we looking for?"

"Crystals. Well… a crystal at least."

"What exactly makes these crystals so-"

Kanan interrupted him before he could continue, "The Empire is after these crystals, they find them very valuable. But its easier to find if someone has a connection to the force."

Ezra accepted this answer and questioned, "So what am I doing?"

"Well, this spot on Lothal has little distraction. I want you to clear your mind and focus on these crystals."

"I'm supposed to just find crystals I don't know about through the force?"

"It's like when I had you tell me what Sabine was doing in another room."

"But I knew who Sabine was and where she was. I don't know anything about these crystals."

"Do you know what a kyber crystal is?"

Ezra thought about it for a moment before replying, "Isn't that the giant crystal you destroyed after I got those codes from buckethead academy? You want one of _those?"_

"Yes." Kanan sat there staring at Ezra's face of confusion before he came to the realization, "Oh not that big!"

"Okay phew.."

"No I just mean the…"

"The crystals in genera-"

"Not that big." the padawan and master laughed for a moment before Kanan replied, "You think you can handle it now?

"Yeah."

Ezra closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths as the Force seemed to draw Ezra's mind out of the ship. Kanan waited patiently on his end as Ezra mumbled, "It's really dark… I think it's a tunnel… there's something small glowing in the walls…" Ezra opened his eyes shouting, "I know where it is! It's here on Lothal!"

"Um…" Kanan had a small look of disbelief but he wasn't about to tell Ezra, who just used the force to figure out their locations, was wrong. "Are you sure? Kyb-"

"It's not far from Tarkintown. I think… no… I can definitely take us there once we get to town."

* * *

Not long after docking just outside of Tarkintown (A little farther away than usual because they didn't want the locals to think they had brought food only for them to have no), Ezra led Kanan out over towards one of the hills.

The two jedi couldn't see any tunnels on the outside, but after closing his eyes and sensing for it, Ezra found a spot that was clearly using a machine to camouflage the area. Ezra looked over at Kanan who examined the machine, "It's Empire-tech, which means they know about this area. We need to careful then."

"Careful is my middle name."

Kanan let out a soft chuckle and rubbed Ezra's head, "Alright then, Ezra _Careful _Bridger. Stay behind me."

Kanan continued walking in with Ezra following close behind, but the further they got into the tunnel the less light than had. Ezra grabbed Kanan's arm and whispered, "I can't see. Can we turn on a light?"

"Only if you want to get spotted by a hiding Imperial."

"But I can't _see."_

"See with the force, not your eyes."

Ezra tried his best to concentrate but found his foot fall into something. he felt himself go down and heard a click followed by a beep. Ezra looked up at Kanan and whispered, "Um… _Kanan."_

Kanan immediately stopped walking and he let out a sigh, "You tripped one of the turret trips didn't you?

"Turret trip?"

The tunnel was dark and quiet, since no one was moving, but after hearing Kanan shift for something, the sound of something being thrown at the ground occurred, and the object continued rolling. After a couple seconds the room flashed with blaster fire until the rolling object seemed to be gone. Ezra gulped and Kanan turned to Ezra, "It's alright, we'll get by. We just need to figure out a way to get out of this without being blasted to pieces."


	12. The Selection

**Stormcutter684 (oh my gosh I memorized that THIS IS A GLORIOUS DA-)"Sorry if I offended you with the Zeb age thing"**

**Offend me? Pff, you didn't offend me at all. It was a reasonable question and it was an excuse for me to clear up anything if someone were to ask later.**

**Thank you to everyone, you've all been so supportive and kind… also we broke 10k views!**

**...and _I just love torturing you all with cliffhangers._**

* * *

Hera flew the Ghost away from Lothal to a location she had yet to tell the other three. Zeb and Sabine sat in their chairs impatiently waiting for Hera to finally speak up, and soon their patience wore off.

"Alright… I know I said that the _last _mission we had would be easy, but I promise this one actually will be. We're just going to Utapau to get intel that Fulcrum requested from a man who just simply goes by Gem."

Zeb immediately cut in shouting, "Uh-uh, NO way! I am not dealing with anymore Pau'ans for at least another month."

Sabine rolled her eyes and looked over at the Lasat, "Zeb, just because we're going to Utapau doesn't mean we're dealing with Pau'ans. And even if we were, you can't just assume all of them are like the Inquisitor."

"Pau'ans are close." Zeb crossed his arms and glared at the Mandalorian, "If the informant _is _a Pau'an, even if they are in disagreements, Pau'ans don't betray each other. They're… 'civilized' is how they'd put it."

Hera gave Zeb a reassuring smile, "Zeb, the Inquisitor is not after us, he's after Ezra and Kanan, they won't be looking for… hm…" Hera thought about it for a moment and looked at Zeb, "You could stay on the ship."

"Why, so I don't have to deal with Pau'ans?"

"Because you're a Lasat."

Hera waited to see if Zeb would reply with something but after he didn't she continued, "We just go there, get intel, bring it to Fulcrum, and we're done. It's simple, involves no stormtroopers, and gives us a break." she turned and set the coordinates for Utapau as Sabine spoke up, "So we're getting a break while Kanan and the kid have to go around with the stormtroopers? That doesn't sound fair."

"It's alright Sabine." Hera thought about what Ezra and Kanan could possibly be doing right then and she continued, "I'm sure right now they're also doing something that involves no blaster fire."

* * *

"WE'RE GONNA DIE IN THIS BLASTER FIRE!"

"Ezra, calm down. Breathe. You can't tell me this is the trickiest situation you've gotten yourself into."

The dark tunnel filled with silence, or at the very least Ezra trying to calm himself down with deep breathing. Kanan repeated what he did with a rock backwards, to see if the turrets were also activated so people couldn't turn around and leave. But when the rolling continued and no blasters fired, "Alright, the turret trip only activates the turrets from…" Kanan reached a hand to his side and found his hand landing on Ezra's shoulder. This made the padawan jump since he didn't know Kanan was directly next to him.

"...this point forward. But… if we turn back we can try and find a way to turn the turrets off." Kanan looked in the direction of his padawan and questioned, "How does that sound?"

"Sounds like the easy way out. I thought you were going to teach some sort of jedi trick involving dodging blaster fire or… or something cool like that."

"I mean, if you want to chance dying go right on ahead."

"I-I'll pass."

The master and padawan carefully made their way back towards a part of the tunnel where there was at least sunlight coming inside. Kanan closed his eyes and placed a hand on the wall of the tunnel. Ezra watched Kanan as he seemed to focus on something before opening his eyes again, "Alright, Ezra, close your eyes and sense for that switch you had accidentally tripped earlier."

The teen closed his eyes and felt the force work with him to find the switch. Ezra held up his arm and spoke, "And now you want me to switch it off?"

"Now you're learning."

"And we went all the way back to the opening of the tunnel just to do this?"

"Hey, better safe than sorry."

Ezra opened up his palm and felt the part of the floor he had stepped into begin to rise again. After a few more moments, he felt it click back into place. Kanan looked at Ezra and spoke, "And now that you're focused on that, look for the other trips and we're going to walk again."

Ezra kept his eyes closed as the two began their walk once more. The teen's footsteps went from a normal walk to an almost lighter footing, as if he was sneaking up on an unsuspecting person to rob when he was on the streets. Although Ezra hadn't noticed before, when Kanan walked through the tunnel he seemed to be a lot more focused on his surroundings.

When the two reached the end of the tunnel, it seemed to be a dead end. But the two knew better. Kanan felt the wall for a small switch and pulled on it. As soon as he did, the rockwall slid and a bright light shined out and onto the two force sensitive's faces.

As their eyes adjusted to the light, they walked forward cautiously and heard the wall slide back shut behind them. Ezra and Kanan looked at each other for a moment before walking further into the room. It was cleaned out, like a waiting room, or some sort of entry room for a tour. There were two doors, both had clear glass showing the contents on the other side. One was an elevator to go further down, the other was an empty meeting room. There was only one other soul in the area, and it was a man at the desk asleep.

Ezra walked silently over to the elevator and went to find a way to open it. It seemed to be secured by a kind of passkey. Ezra pulled out his device to try and unlock it manually, but before he could use it, the man at the desk stirred.

Kanan motioned for Ezra to come over next to him and he quickly made his way to his master's side. When the man sat up, he yawned and opened one eye to see Kanan and Ezra. The man made a visible face of embarrassment and quickly sat straight and looked attentive and serious, "Good day to you two. You must be the collectors. I am terribly sorry for my behavior."

The two looked at each other and almost laughed, but managed to not. Kanan stepped forward and spoke, "There's no need for apologizing. I'm sure you work hard."

"U-uh yes. Thank you for understanding. Now, before I let you down, could I please see some identification."

Ezra looked at the man at the desk and spoke, "Um…"

Kanan held up his hand and spoke, using the force, "_You don't need to see our identification._"

The man at the desk nodded and repeated, "I don't need to see your identification." he quickly wrote something out on a datapad and continued, "You guys wouldn't be in this room if you didn't have the access passes anyway. Those turrets keep out those thieves out of here."

After there were a couple more clicks on the datapad, the man held out a keycard towards Kanan, "This'll let you into the elevator. Please stay on the paths and avoid the Quarren. They have been known to be hostile towards the collectors. I'll be sure to let the men down there know you're here to pick up the shipme-"

"_You don't need to tell them. We have it under control." _Kanan spoke again, using his power and waiting for the man to repeat the words back. Once he did, Kanan and Ezra made their way to the elevator, used the keycard, and entered the elevator.

When the elevator shut Ezra turned to Kanan, "Quarren?"

"The Empire enslaves many Quarren to do mining,. They've been going after Wookiees lately for mining jobs, but Quarren are much more effective at it, even though they're from an aquatic planet..."

Ezra's eyes looked sad as he spoke, "Could we help them out?"

Kanan looked pained for a moment as he placed a hand on Ezra's shoulder, "I wish we could help out everyone, Ezra. But right now we can't afford to. We know nothing about these mines and we would have nowhere to bring them if we helped them escape. Even if it is the right thing to do, sometimes you have to choose the smart decision, even if it isn't the right decision."

Ezra let the words sink in for a moment before nodding, "I understand."

The door to the elevator opened up right on cue, and revealed another tunnel lit by the occasional torch. There was no one seemingly nearby, so Kanan turned and spoke quietly, "Alright… the crystals. See if you can sense any in particular."

Ezra closed his eyes and felt the force lead him somewhere off to the right of the path and he whispered in response, "This way." and the two made their way off the path carefully.

Ezra went the way he felt the force led him, occasionally stopping to reconnect before continuing. After making it pretty far off the path, Kanan stopped his padawan when he realized they were heading into a tunnel still being mined by a Quarren. The jedi turned to Ezra and questioned, "In there?"

"Yeah… it's…" Ezra let his hand be guided by the force until he was pointing to a particular one being dug out right then by the Quarren, "That one…"

Kanan looked around to see if anyone was looking before approaching the Quarren, who was about to pull the crystal out of the wall, "Excuse me?" The slave turned immediately at Kanan's words and he held up his hands in defense to show he meant no harm, "I'm sorry for intruding, but my partner here was interested in that particular crystal. Would it be alright if we took it?"

"Collectors should not be off path." they turned to continue what they were doing, "Must meet quota or no food. Need food."

Ezra looked around and saw other crystals in the wall and he whispered, "Master, I can dig any of these other crystals out of the wall, I was just drawn to that particular one. But we can grab any of these ones and have no proble-"

"No, it has to be that one, Ezra." Kanan looked at Ezra's backpack and grabbed it while Ezra shouted, "Hey!" and Kanan told him to hush. He pulled a meiloorun out of the bag and chuckled, "Did you think you were going to starve?"

"I was saving it for later!"

"Uh huh." Kanan walked over to the Quarren and held the fruit towards him, "We'll trade."

The Quarren's eyes widened as he quickly grabbed the fruit and looked over at Ezra and spoke, "Take it." the Quarren hid the fruit in their clothes as Ezra felt his connection to the force grow stronger and stronger the closer he got to the crystal. When he held it, he watched as the crystal slowly turned into a blue color. Ezra looked over at Kanan in fear and spoke, "D-did I do something wr-"

"No, it's supposed to do that." Kanan smiled before beginning to turn Ezra around, "Thank you so much sir we'll be on our wa-"

As the two turned around they noticed four stormtroopers and a few workers standing with guns shouting, "Freeze thieves. We don't know how you got in here but you're under arrest."

Ezra quickly slipped the crystal into his bag and Kanan held up his hands in arrest, Ezra looked over at him and Kanan winked at him before he started to do the same, "Oh we're so sorry officers, we didn't know better."

"Get down on the ground!"

The two force sensitives looked at each other and in sync sent their hands forward and pushed the seven armed men back onto the ground. Then the master and padawan began their run.


	13. The Exit

**"Do you wonder how a Human/Pau'an hybrid child would look like if they'd exist and if they inherited the long span of their Pau'an parent?" -WindGoddess Rune**

**Huh, I cannot say I have wondered it before… but now I am. It's an interesting idea… I just imagine those teeth on a human and I just *shudders***

**"Good going they always get into trouble huh?" -DragonRobotkid676**

**Aha, alright. Just for you, I'll throw in a chapter somewhere where none of them get into trouble and they all can't fathom the idea of it. Sound good?**

**_Nobody noticed I forgot the disclaimer last chapter aaaAAAAAH_**

**_[And since this is the point where episodes come back, this fanfiction is going to be more difficult for me to write, because differences between this and the show will exist, please keep that in mind at things continue from here on out, okay? Thank you all for the support]_**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

It wasn't long after the two began their sprint that they were soon fired at. When the two reached the elevator they attempted to open it only for it to be locked down.

"Oh boy."

"Keycard! Try the keycard?"

Kanan pulled out the keycard and slid it in but it did not open. Ezra watched as the troopers made their way back, he pulled back his slingshot and stunned a couple of them but they kept their pursuit. Kanan pulled out his blaster and motioned for Ezra to try his wrench. When that didn't work Ezra turned towards his master and spoke, "Um, Kanan? I think we should-"

"Find another way out? That's what I'm doing now."

The two looked at each other at exactly the same time and heard more troopers approaching. If they didn't leave this area, they would be cornered. Kanan looked inside the elevator once more before throwing his blaster at Ezra and shouting, "Cover for me!"

"Wha-"

Kanan quickly put his lightsaber together and spun around and turned on the lightsaber as he began to cut through the elevator doors. Ezra only stared at Kanan for a moment before he remembered the troopers and he turned around and began firing. One of the workers moved to activate their comm and inform the others of the intrusion but Ezra managed to knock him out just in time.

When the outline of the hole was finished, Kanan kicked it in and looked up to see if the elevator was coming down before entering fully inside and yelling, "Come on Ezra, you've held them off enough!"

Ezra followed after Kanan who looked up the shaft again, blasters from troopers were still entering in through the hole. Kanan grabbed his blaster from Ezra and hooked a grapple device onto it before he shot it up. Once it hooked into something higher up on the shaft Kanan grabbed Ezra's arm and spoke up, "Hang on kid."

The two quickly rose up the elevator and the blasters seemed to shift upward at them until no shots could have hit the two rebels, so the firing stopped. It was silent before the loud ring of something shifting through the elevator shaft caused Kanan to stop the grapple's ascent. He looked up and whistled, "Hey Ezra."

"Yeah?"

"You don't see a door to another level around do you?"

"Wh-"

"Don't ask, just look."

Ezra turned his head around and looked to find what Kanan was looking for and saw a door up a little bit higher than where the two were dangling, "There's one up there. You just need to rise up a little more."

Kanan rose up the grapple a little bit more before the grapple began to shake and Kanan quickly spoke, "Look for a lower door."

Ezra looked down and obeyed the command and spoke, "There's…"

The two began plummeting rapidly and the two let out yells as Kanan recalled the grapple and looked around immediately for some sort of door, but Ezra already saw a door and pointed shouting, "That one!" Kanan pulled out his lightsaber and stabbed into the wall until their falling stopped, but the shaft shook.

"Is that the elevator?!"

"Get up to the door NOW!" Kanan shouted with the sound of strain in his voice. Ezra climbed up and jumped to the ledge. He gripped tightly and pulled himself up, and as quickly as possible and pulled out his wrench. When he got the door open he heard the roar of the elevator quickly approaching.

Kanan recalled the lightsaber and made a leap for the edge. When he landed the two pushed each other out of the elevator shaft and watched the elevator drop down. The two sat there breathing heavily as they tried to calm themselves down, Kanan turned to Ezra and questioned, "Are you alright?"

Ezra nodded and mumbled, "Yeah." before Kanan helped Ezra to his feet. The two were now in what could only be assumed a part of the cave they were done working with. Kanan looked back in the elevator and spoke, "We should see if there's another way out other than the elevator, I don't think we'll manage that one again… they must have something in case the elevator breaks down." The two closed their eyes and focused and tried to look for their exit as fast as they could.

* * *

The Ghost found itself stationing into Pau City with no problems at all. Zeb got himself comfortable in a chair in the cockpit while Chopper seemed to contemplate some sort of way to ruin Zeb's comfort.

Hera and Sabine got themselves ready to head on out to find Gem but before they left Hera shouted so it echoed throughout the ship, "If you're going to kill each other make sure to keep it down!" Sabine let out a chuckle at the comment as the two women left the ship.

Upon their exit, they were greeted by Pau'ans waiting nearby the ship, "Welcome offworlders, we do not get that many visitors as of late. Welcome to Utapau." Hera and Sabine both replied with thank yous at the same time before the Pau'an continued, "What brings you here?"

The two females interchanged looks, before they decided they saw no flaw in just outright telling them who they were looking for, just not why they were looking for him, "We were called by an acquaintance of ours on this world, his name is Gem."

The Pau'an immediately let out a toothed smile, which was meant to come across as friendly but could understandable scare someone not used to a Pau'an smile, "Ah yes, Gem had said we should expect visitors soon that wanted to come find him. He should be in the Market District. Would you like me to take you there?"

Hera held up her hands, "Oooh no, thank you but we couldn't take away from your time like that, I'm sure you're very busy."

"It really is no trouble at all." The Pau'an then motioned for the two to follow them.

The Pau'an lead them through the various parts of the sinkhole city until they eventually came to a seemingly busy area that wasn't entirely filled with Pau'ans, in fact there were quite a few different species around, but before they could ask about it, the Pau'an arrived at their destination.

"Here you are, sorry that I cannot stay but I have a previous commitment I must make it to. Enjoy your time here." and the Pau'an took their leave. The mandalorian and twi'lek then made their way into the shop they had been led to.

The shop was rather… filthy. Or at least it seemed that way. There was no one inside the main room and it was very silent. Hera took a step forward ahead of Sabine and spoke up, "Hello? Is anyone in here?"

There was a slow shuffling heard from another room. A door slid open to the right of the two of them revealing a figure standing in full Echani battle armor, which put Sabine quickly on edge. The helmet turned in time to see Sabine having her hand over her blaster, there was a chuckle that came from the person who spoke, "Of course it's the Mandalorian that goes for the blaster."

Hera turned towards Sabine, Sabine's glare could almost be felt, since it couldn't be seen under the helmet, "I-It was you know how many times I've been senselessly attacked by Echanis just for being Mandalorian?"

"Assuming I'm Echani." There was silence for a moment before another chuckle came from them, "I am Echani though, but I have no business fighting Mandalorians today. You can call me Tesk. But I'm certain you aren't here for me..."

Hera nodded slightly and answered, "We are looking for a man named Gem… are we in the correct place?" Tesk took a step back and motioned towards the door they just opened, "He is in here."

Hera and Sabine entered the room with Tesk following close behind them. The room they entered was in an even worse state than the main room. There was a table scattered with credits and a broken holographic projector. In one of the broken chairs sat a young man in a mask. The man stretched to wake himself up and spoke, "You're Fulcrum's intel collectors."

Hera opened her mouth to speak but before she did she found a holodisk being tossed towards her, she caught it and the man continued, "Tell Fulcrum that Gem said _I have no developments on getting intel on A42, G88, or L1428-1566. I can't keep stationed on Utapau if you want any further updates on OS-5. And I refuse to go any further into DS, DS would take too much work and delving into the Empire's top information in order for me to go further… take that job up with someone else."_

Hera tried to speak again, but the young man held his hand up as if to cut her off and spoke, "I know, you wouldn't remember all that. Here. Take it." The Twi'lek went to catch the datapad and opened her mouth to speak again but the man cut her off again, "Yes, I am Gem. I know you work for Fulcrum because you wouldn't be here otherwise.

The man immediately turned his head in the direction of Sabine and continued, "No, I'm not removing the mask, and I am giving you respect even if I'm not letting you speak. If you find that to be disrespect then suck it up."

"Alright, how did you do that?" Sabine threw in, "There is-"

"-No way you're that predictable?" There was clear breath of annoyance coming from Sabine, and Hera looked towards her and placed a hand on her shoulder to help calm her down. Tesk let out a chuckle behind the two and spoke up, "Alright, knock it off Gem. You show off more than you should."

Gem stood up from his seat and shifted stuff around on the table and picked up a couple of credits and spoke, "It's not showing off, it's a typical intel mission. They aren't doing anything I haven't done for countless other collectors." Gem looked at the two and laughed, "I must say though, a mandalorian and a twi'lek is not a combination I see every day. Anyway, here's a couple of credits to pay the docking fee. And please do be careful and make sure that intel doesn't fall into anyone other than Fulcrum's hands… especially not someone here on Utapau. I keep up an appearance for the Pau'ans and I don't wish to get anyone in trouble. Especially my sources here."

Before the two could even say another word, Tesk started to lead them out the door. Gem waved at them but didn't add any more verbal comment. When they were outside of the shop, the door was locked behind them Sabine turned her head back to the door and murmured under her breath, "I don't like that guy at all."

"We don't have to like him, it wasn't part of the job description." Hera shifted a bag she had slung over her shoulder and had managed to place the datapad and the holodisk inside during that whole fiasco.

The two made their way back through the districts back towards the port when Sabine finally asked a question that was killing her, but she asked it very quietly so only Hera heard her, "Why were they detailing so many codenames for plans? Is he the guy Fulcrum is having decipher all that intel from Tseebo?"

"Sabine, I may be the one who directly contacts Fulcrum, but I don't know exactly what they're doing. I've been with you on the Ghost doing our own thing…" Hera crossed her arms and quietly continued, "I trust that if Fulcrum is involved, no matter how much of a jerk that man may seem, he's part of a cause we are part of."

Sabine let out a sigh at Hera's response and continued following towards the ship as she added, "I still don't like it, those two gave me a vibe I didn't like."

* * *

At some point, Ezra and Kanan had found what they were looking for, their secondary way out. It was a tunnel that began to slope upwards more towards the surface, but the two of them kept having to stop and check to make sure they wouldn't get lost in an off path.

Ezra couldn't keep as focused as he hoped, and ended up following Kanan and relying on him to keep them from getting lost. But at some point, Kanan stopped and turned to Ezra, "You do know I can tell you're slacking."

Ezra pulled some sort of offended face for a moment before he let out a sigh, "I keep getting distracted."

"By what? Getting out of here isn't your first priority?"

Ezra looked around the cave for a moment before replying, "I-I don't know." Kanan eyed him before continuing on his path, "You do know."

"No I don't." There was silence before Ezra let out an distressed sigh, "Okay I kind of do… but it isn't just one thing, it's many things."

"Want to talk about it?"

"There isn't much to talk about."

"Well if it's bothering you... talking about it, no matter how small it may be, may get it out of your system."

There was more silence between the two before Ezra asked, "If it means keeping your friends alive… would you do whatever someone told you to do?"

Kanan thought about the question, and seemingly opened his mouth to answer it, but right when he did, they found the exit from the cave. Ezra ran ahead without waiting for Kanan's answer to his question and examined the area. The padawan turned around and shouted, "The coast is clear!"

"Yeah? Shout it louder, I'm sure the workers didn't hear y-"

Right on cue a blaster shot fired from farther back in the cave and just barely missed Kanan's head. The jedi began to run again, grabbing Ezra to make sure he was running by him, but when he was finally running on his own he let him go.

As the two nearly made it to the Phantom, something neither expected happened. One of the stormtroopers in the distance fired at an unstable rock, which flew in the direction of the two rebels. While both managed to duck in time, the rock sloped a little further down as it approached Kanan, and knocked the jedi out.

Ezra looked over at his master and shook him to see if he would respond. When he didn't Ezra grabbed Kanan and pulled him onto the Phantom. Leaving him on the ground, Ezra shut the door and looked out the cockpit window to see more Imperials than he would have liked running towards them. He manned the guns for a moment and tried shooting at the stormtroopers, which succeeded for a time but then they came too close to the Phantom to do anything.

Then he saw a TIE approaching.

"Oh great…" Ezra looked around at the controls and turned on the ship.

"I'm gonna have to fly this thing…" Ezra spoke with stress, then his eyes lit up brightly, "I'm gonna have to fly this thing!" Then the TIE started to fire and he quickly took off, shakily flying in the atmosphere and barely managed to scrape along.

"Kanan. Kanan. Hey um, Master? Waking up soon would be _really nice _right now." Ezra shouted in a panicked tone as he continued flying the Phantom as far as he could.

* * *

**These chapters get longer and longer each time. Aha…**

**_Have a happy new year!_**


	14. The Prying

"**Did you get to watch the new episode of Star Wars Rebels?" -WindGoddess Rune**

_**I did, I watched it before I finished the last chapter. It was what I meant when I said it would be more difficult for me to write this since I'm clearly diverging from the show now. I'll get used to it after a while but SOON I WILL HAVE EZRA'S LIGHTSABER BUILT IN MY TIMEL-**_

"**If you like the Human/Pau'an hybrid child idea, you can use it in your Star Wars stories if you like. You've got my permission to do it." -WindGoddess Rune**

_**Oh, why thank you, I just may. :)**_

**This is your first story, you said?- Grawman67**

_**Nooo but this is definitely already the longest I've gone keeping a story going. If this was anywhere else or at any other point in my life, this story would be dead. But seeing that you guys are liking it is really inspiring me to keep it going. Everytime I get a review from you guys I smile so largely just knowing someone took the time to read my story.**_

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

"I sold your lightsaber on the black market!"

The Phantom turned sharply to avoid hitting a mountain as the TIE continued pursuit. The raven-haired pilot was clearly freaking out and not having clear control of the ship. He kept looking back at his unconscious master and kept trying to say something that would wake him up. It ended up resorting to lies most of the time, hoping he could shock him awake. Nothing was working. Ezra didn't want to pilot into space because he wasn't sure if he could handle it, but flying in circles in Lothal was not working, and he didn't want more TIEs to show up.

"...You know what Kanan, I'm giving into my emotions. Yeah, I'm gonna fall to the dark side. Might as well. I might END UP KILLING US BOTH ANYWAY."

Ezra was silent, waiting for a response from Kanan, but he received no response. The teen watched the TIE approach and he let out a quick scared gasp as he tried firing back at the TIE. When it missed, he tried turning to get out of the way... but it didn't work, so he quickly went up vertically towards the sky. He heard a clunk as Kanan's body clearly fell against the wall due to the gravity. But then he heard a grunting noise behind him, which eventually turned into a voice behind him shouting, "Ez... EZRA WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

"FINALLY YOU'RE AWAKE!"

"LEVEL OUT."

"I'M TRYING."

"DO IT. DON'T TRY. WE'VE BEEN THROUGH THIS BEFORE."

Ezra moved the controls forward and heard a big swoosh before they were leveled out. The teen took deep breaths to try and calm down but found himself pushed out of the pilot's chair as Kanan took over, "We are _not _telling Hera about this."

"Well then... any damage done was by _you_."

Kanan seemed to take the comment casually before looking at Ezra, "W-wait damage? What did y-"

The TIE hit the bottom of the ship causing the two passengers on board to cling to the ship to keep steady. Kanan flew the Phantom lower and fired at the TIE, which fortunately hit this time but unfortunately there was a cost as Kanan felt the Phantom hard to control. Ezra whistled and Kanan mumbled under his breath, "We need to get this repaired or Hera's gonna make us owe a life debt to her."

"Don't you mean _you _will owe a life debt to her."

"Kid, if I'm going down you're going down with me. Even if we don't tell Hera about the ship you're still my padawan."

"Right, because that's totally the Jedi way, make the padawan suffer because the master suffers."

"Ezra."

The boy looked over at Kanan while he was piloting the ship somewhere to land, "As much as I would love to joke around, we're in the middle of a failing ship and I would love it if you could tell me a good spot to park."

Ezra was about to open his mouth and ask how, but then he realized what the answer would most likely be, so Ezra closed his eyes and searched before opening his eyes and replied, "The usual spot we park isn't too far away."

"How far did you fly this thing?"

Ezra looked away with eyes widened in embarrassment, "Not important…"

Kanan let out a chuckle at the reaction and searched for the spot.

* * *

At that point, everyone who was supposed to be on the Ghost was back on board and heading to Fulcrum's rendezvous point. So far this mission seemed like a piece of cake, and it would most likely remain that way, but a certain Mandalorian was not happy with the situation.

It wasn't necessarily that she was upset about no trouble, she enjoyed the break as much as anyone else, but her patience over the Fulcrum situation was beginning to wear thin. And as much as she trusted Hera, after that encounter with Gem things seemed wrong.

Sabine was going to do something she usually wouldn't do to the team.

Hera had left the bag with the datapad and holodisk in Kanan's room, Sabine had watched her place it in there just for safe keeping, she didn't expect Sabine to do what she was doing. The mandalorian snuck into the room and went through the bag. She scanned through the datapad but it was just what Gem had said out loud to them prior. Exactly what he had said, with not even a change in words.

Sabine put the datapad in and felt for the holodisk. When she got it, she placed it in her pocket and snuck out of the room. She looked around for Chopper, who was rolling around doing maintenance work. She stopped him and mumbled, "Hey Chop, could you give me a hand with something?"

There was a beep of annoyance and Sabine hushed him down and begged, "Pleaaase, it'll just be a few minutes." The astomech let out what sounded like a sigh and a beep in agreement.

Sabine let him to her room and shut the door behind her; she didn't bother locking it since she assumed no one would bother her. She turned to Chopper and whispered, "Alright I need you to play this disk for me…. Keep the volume down though, okay?"

Chopper grumbled as Sabine placed the disk inside his drive and Chopper began to project something that blinked. Sabine recognized it immediately, "Ugh… its pass coded… alright Chopper this might take a little longer."

Sabine plugged a wire from the keypad on her wrist and began to hack through the code, trying to leave it so nothing would pick up her intrusion. This would mean she would only have one chance to watch or read whatever was recorded or programmed into the disk. When she got through, the projection commenced, and she took a step back to analyze it.

The projection showed a young man standing with his arms crossed almost as if he were keeping his arms warm. It was the young man she recognized from the market with his mask still on as if he had recorded the message seconds before Hera and she had shown up.

"_This is Gemini __Tfirda."_

Sabine whispered to herself in a slight chuckle, "Gemini?"

"_I have taken the time to go through all of the plans and specs you have sent from the Rodian. You had only just given them to me, but you had said you wished for an update on overall deciphering and I was able to get enough information on some of the plans from my sources. They are written out in great detail further into this disk since quite honestly the time I am using to send this message I could be using to work out more plans."_

"That was blunt…"

"_However you and I both know that there are verbal messages that I cannot write down in words, so while the update for plans and specs are written out, I am going to update you on the rest here."_

The projection moved their hand up to the mask and pulled it off, underneath it revealed a man in between some sort of human shift and something else. It turned to fully human, then phased out into what Sabine quickly recognized as a clawdite. And although she knew she was delving into information she shouldn't have been, Sabine felt in some way seeing the mask off she had gone too far. But she didn't turn off the message.

"_My… source for finding anything involving the Old is gone."_

Sabine's curiosity peaked but she noted the sadness in his voice. She wanted to know what the _Old _he meant were, and hoped he would in some way explain it.

"_Due to this… I'm afraid any intel involving artifacts or any recovery will have to be taken up somewhere else. I… feel upset about this in the worst way, as any information I had found for you was just as important to me…"_

The clawdite's face shifted into a human form as they spoke the next words.

"_I do hope even after that I am still of use to you. I am all for this cause as much as anyone out there on the forefront. However, I may have to leave Utapau soon. I have had far too many close calls and it is only a matter of time before I find myself hunted down."_

Gem placed his mask back on his face as the sound of a door could be heard in the background. After a moment of silence he continued, _"I will send out another update either when something important comes up or if you call for another one."_

Another door sound was heard in the background, but Sabine knew this time it wasn't part of the projection. She looked over to see Hera standing in the door with her arms crossed and a look of disappointment on her face. Sabine looked back at Hera with a pained face due to being caught but both of the two were caught off guard by the final words spoken in a whisper by the projection.

"_May the force be with you."_

The two looked over at the projection just as it finished and disappeared. A screen showed up allowing access to all of the plans, but the two females knew that what was seen was more than ever needed to be seen. Sabine ejected the disk from Chopper who slid out of the room almost as if to avoid the scolding.

Sabine held the disk out to Hera, who just shook her head and walked away, "Don't give it back to me, it wasn't my business to begin with. Put it back where you found it."

The mandalorian stood guiltily in her room with her hand still out with the disk. She pulled it back and glanced it over and whispered, "This is what got you into trouble in the first place Sabine…"

* * *

The Jedi and padawan were both running back and forth between a pile of supplies they had gathered and the ship. They had managed to do a spectacular job so far at fixing up the Phantom so far, and both kept managing to keep the other entertained as they went about it.

In truth, Kanan would much rather be continuing with Ezra and his lightsaber, but even so, the two were at least having a little fun with this. Trying to paint the Phantom's burn marks to its original color. They both _knew _they weren't going to get away with this, they knew Hera would know something happened to her ship, but they still wanted to avoid the lectures as much as possible.

It didn't hurt that Kanan at least knew a little bit about Hera's ship.

Ezra kept occasionally making trips back and forth from a speeder to his tower, where he happened to have a lot of spare ship parts for reasons he wouldn't fully explain to Kanan, but at least it was convenient. At one point Ezra brought up a bit of conversation that he knew was personal to Kanan, but he was curious about knowing.

"Hey um… master…. Did you fight in the clone wars?"

Kanan stopped for a moment to think over the question before answering, "There were a lot of padawans that… became padawans earlier than usual and were assigned to masters to learn and fight alongside them. I wasn't really one of them."

"What do you mean _not really_?"

Kanan reached his arm out and grabbed a wrench as he climbed under the ship and opened up a small part of the ship and began to fix some of the dents, "Well, there was a war going on, but not everyone was fighting in battles directly. Some of us were sent into worlds to prevent the war from being drawn to them, to help out people who were in need due to the affects of war."

Ezra followed Kanan under the ship and ducked down a little lower so he could see what he was fixing as well as listen to what he had to say. Kanan paused for a moment and looked down at Ezra and spoke, "I'm not gonna lie though, at the time I really wanted to fight. Everyone thought that was what it meant to be a jedi: to not back down, to make a difference in the galaxy by fighting for the republic. But in the end we were all fools."

"Fools?"

Kanan realized the words he said and decided to change the subject, "By the way, Ezra… I never answered your question from earlier."

"Don't try to change the su-"

"About how you asked if I would do whatever I was told if it saved my friend's life…"

Ezra almost seemed to be even quieter than before as he focused on the words Kanan was about to say. Kanan jumped down and looked Ezra in the eyes, "That is a question only you can answer for yourself, you have to feel whether or not it is right or wrong, whether or not your friend is willing to sacrifice or if they are not willing to sacrifice. Whether you are willing to give up nothing or everything."

The teen thought about the answer and mumbled, "That wasn't the answer I was hoping for."

"Well sometimes the answer we receive is not the answer we seek."

Ezra's face clearly appeared annoyed, "Do you answer me in cryptic messages because you understand them, or because you were just told them when you asked them?"

Kanan laughed a little and messed Ezra's hair up a bit, "Ezra, trust me, it's one of the times I understood what my masters meant. And I'm sure you'll understand it too. Just give it a little time."


	15. The Build

**Did you notice how Hans from Frozen looks similar to Agent Kallus? -WindGoddess Rune**

**_I noticed when a tumblr post pointed it out... Same with space Aladdin, which by the way I have made sooo many references to Aladdin in this story it's ridiculous. Especially in Chapter 7._**

**_I have rewritten this chapter more times than I am willing to count. I'm sorry if it's not up to standard, at this point I'm just trying to move things along._**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

When Ezra and Kanan felt their repairs were as best as they were going to get, Kanan decided that since they were close enough to Ezra's tower that would be the more appropriate place to go for the next step. But before they had gone, Kanan went back into the ship and pulled a box he had pre-packed out of a compartment. He opened the lid for a moment to check if everything was still inside.

Within were spare parts for a lightsaber he had for years. There were a couple parts missing but with enough modifications they would be able to get it to work, or at least he hoped. Kanan walked back out of the Phantom and over towards the speeder Ezra had hauled over. "Where do you keep these usually?"

"By the tower. No one usually comes near it anyway. Sometimes they break down and I just fix them up and keep a pile of junk. It's where I got a lot of the parts for the Phantom."

"Well at least you're resourceful." Kanan joked as the two sped off in the direction of the tower.

When they arrived, the two climbed their way up, Kanan taking the box in tow. Ezra looked off into the distance at the nearby city and back over at Kanan, "So why here?"

"Because we were here." Was all Kanan could come up with. The padawan rolled his eyes and entered the tower and cleared off a workbench, "Well even if its just because we're here. We're at least in my favorite building spot... hm.." The teen opened up his bag and pulled out the crystal and held it towards Kanan, "Here. So what exactly do we do with this to make it such a threatening blaster."

Kanan looked confused for a moment before he realized he still hadn't told Ezra the truth about the whole project.

"Oh... right... Ezra. You know what I said about building a blaster? I kind of lied."

Ezra's eyes widened at the very notion of Kanan and replied, "What is this supposed to be then?"

Kanan grinned and replied simply, "A lightsaber."

There was a moment of silent realization before Ezra's confused eyes from the lie turned into a spark of excitement, "No way!" he looked like he could run for a mile cheering before he calmed down rather abruptly and mumbled, "I was kind of excited about the blaster though... after all that hype..."

Kanan laughed a bit before asking, "What do you not want a lightsaber then?"

"What? No! Of course I want one!"

"Alright then kid, because that's what you're going to do. Build one for yourself. You found the crystal on your own, which was a test in itself. I just accompanied you. Normally you would be sent into a cave on Ilum and have to find it completely on your own. I was more than glad to hear Lothal had small caves. They probably don't find much though."

Ezra was still staring at his crystal as he asked, "Why?"

"Ilum is the world they naturally come from. The Empire makes sure no one goes anywhere near there anymore though. Believe me, I tried. I wouldn't be surprised if these kyber crystals turned out to be a bit synthetic but that shouldn't take away from the fact you were drawn to that crystal. It's yours."

The master and padawan stood on opposite sides of the workbench. Kanan placed the box of lightsaber parts on the table and Ezra grinned widely, "I'll get started then."

* * *

"So how are you two doing?" Hera spoke through the communicator in the cockpit. She'd finally heard back from Kanan, which let her know the two were still alive.

_"We've got the parts. Ezra's working on it himself right now. I'm just outside waiting."_

"How long do you think it'll take?"

_"Um... the first time I made one it took me most of the day. It depends. I can't help Ezra at all through this; he has to use the Force to guide him through. Hopefully, it won't take too long but I can't control how long it takes. There a kid that took a month to make his."_

"Lets hope that's not the case, love. Anyway, I'm just about to meet at Fulcrum's rendezvous point and deliver the intel. Afterwards we'll head on over to Lothal." Hera thought for a moment and asked a question she wasn't sure if she'd like the answer for, "How's my ship?"

"_Great."_

There was silence for a moment before Hera commented, "That was a little fast for an answer."

"_No really, it is fine. It is in one piece."_

Hera almost glared hearing the undertone of Kanan's voice. So instead she ended it with, "We'll talk about it later. You two have fun."

"_Take care."_

Hera shut off the comm and heard the door behind her open. She immediately went from smiling to an annoyed face and looked out the corner of her eyes to see the painted mandalorian she was currently not in the best mood with. Hera's voice almost sounded like a passive aggressive mother as she spoke, "As much as you would love to see Fulcrum's face I'm afraid you're going to have to stay on the ship."

Sabine's voice sounded pained as she took a seat in the chair behind the copilot's chair and replied, "Hera I'm sorry."

"Sorry that you did what you did? Or sorry that you got caught in the act?"

"Hera…"

The Twi'lek let out a sigh before turning around and facing the teen, "I'm not upset with you… I'm disappointed in you. I thought our conversation on that asteroid meant something…"

"It did."

"Then why did you hack into the holodisk to watch that message?"

Sabine thought for the correct words for a moment before she found them, "I just wanted to know what was up with that guy. I didn't trust him and I… I don't trust Fulcrum." She held up her hands on the defensive and continued, "I trust you, I really do. I promise."

Hera's eyes left Sabine for a moment so she could think about what she was going to reply with. When she figured it out she turned back to pilot the ship while stating, "Fulcrum is not a very open book, but I can tell you from what I do know… is that they have been fighting corruption for far longer than even the Empire's existed. You do not like their anonymity, I can tell, but they do it to protect themselves… the less who know about them personally, the better. I can't force you to like Fulcrum or Gen, or trust them. But believe me, these people believe in bringing down the Empire as much as you or me."

The mandalorian crossed her arms and let the speech sink in. She eventually stood up and turned to leave stating, "I'll just make sure not to go through their intel again then… do you need anything at all? Maybe some tea?"

"It's fine hun. Go do something you enjoy, did you get Chopper yet for the outline painting?"

Sabine thought about it for a moment before grinning mischievously, "No, actually. I haven't gotten the chance. You don't mind if your astromech is painted?"

"Well unless you manage to somehow get Kanan I think that's the best you'll get. Besides, I know you'll clean him up afterward… right?"

"I knew there was a catch."

* * *

It was dark outside and Kanan was still waiting on Ezra. He was rather enjoying a little bit of quiet and he was getting used to the spot Ezra had managed to get a hold of. It was pretty nice considering, and a good distance from the city. He wondered if there was any competition for it.

Kanan decided to take some time and meditate, and give a little more encouragement to Ezra through the force. He backed up near the entrance so he wasn't as close to the edge as he had been. He closed his eyes and began the usual steps of meditation when something went wrong. He felt almost a pressure in his head before he started to see and feel something beyond him, something that only pained him.

* * *

_Everything at first appeared dark, then almost seemed as if it caught fire. Two tall figures were approaching whatever viewpoint Kanan was watching through, but then the sound of lightsabers came and the figures screamed._

"_No!" The voice sounded pained and he couldn't __make out who it was. The figures dropped to the floor and the viewpoint stepped closer towards the third figure that had just spoken, it was dark and standing at the other end of the hallway._

**"**_**It's a shame. We didn't need to have them die. But I'm afraid that's all I had left."** the viewpoint's vision flickered and a whisper was heard, **"I don't want to die."**_

"_You killed them!" There was almost a cry in the voice but the sadness almost immediately turned into anger, "You… you scum! I'll get you back for this!"_

**"_I don't want to die."_**

"_I-I'll kill you!" the third figure ran at the viewpoint with such hate and ferocity and the viewpoint only matched it with a laugh,_**_ "Try me. _Jedi_."_**


	16. The Recollection

_**I have nothing to note other than I have nothing to note.**_

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

Agent Kallus was having a rough day when it came to getting things under control. He received the transmission about a group of robbers in the caves and had been trying to figure out how they could have possibly gotten through the system.

He hadn't realized until 20 minutes prior that these robbers were his rebel group, and that just made things all the worse. With at least a regular robber group he could have equated it to black market trade or something along those lines, but now he had to associate it with rebellion.

It ultimately just led to more paperwork.

And that's all he was doing. Agent Kallus was at a desk filling out paperwork while waiting for an update on the location of the rebels. He didn't understand what was so difficult about finding an outlander ship in the middle of a field. When he had asked Aresko about it, he had said something along the lines of, "It's not that finding a ship is the problem. It's that there are so many fields we have no way of knowing where exactly the ship may be."

Kallus had the feeling with the reliability of the team on this planet that the rebels were most likely hiding in plain sight. And now that night had come it would only take longer. The agent was just about to wrap things up when he heard a transmission call for him, so he answered, "This is Agent Kallus, what is it?"

"We believe we have located the ship but the rebels are not on site. Should we destroy the ship?"

"No. If you can get into the ship and place something in there to keep them on our radar that would be better off. But if they are docked they should be nearby… where is your location?"

"It is on the outskirts of Capital City, sir."

Kallus spent a moment pondering how to go about their business and responded with, "Continue placing a tracker. I will arrive there as soon as I can."

* * *

"_**I don't want to die."**_

_The voice carried over and slowly changed into a more male-sounding voice. It was no longer a whisper, but almost a scream. But at the same time it was not yelled out loud. The dark grew brighter and clone troopers came into view. They stood silently, no weapons drawn. They were talking to a figure in front about something there was no use prying into._

_At a point, the general of the clones walked away from the figure. They answered a transmission, which the figure could see vaguely as a man in a robe. No words could be heard until the clone spoke, "It will be done, my lord."_

_The view began to shift as they heard the clone send out a transmission to other clones, "Execute Order 66."_

_The clone and others around the figure pointed their guns up towards the figure. The viewpoint held a hand out towards the figure and shouted,__** "Master, look out!"**_

_The viewpoint ran behind bushes and peaked out just in time to see the figure pull out a lightsaber._

_The memory cut to black and held only the sound of blaster fire._

**"_Master!"_**

* * *

"Kanan!"

The Jedi felt his shoulders shaken but he couldn't open his eyes, he instead mumbled, "I'm sorry."

"Master!" Ezra was almost done with his lightsaber, but he ran outside upon hearing Kanan let out a scream. Kanan looked horrific, and seemed to be in some sort of nightmare. But something didn't feel right. "If you can hear me, open your eyes."

Kanan did not open his eyes, instead tears streamed down his face, which made Ezra stare at him in absolute shock. Kanan whispered, "I'm sorry. I-I should have helped you. I saw them move, master… but…"

Ezra had all but stopped moving at this point as he heard Kanan finalize with, "I didn't want to die…"

The padawan sat in front of his master and waited a moment before the horrible feeling Ezra felt earlier had all but disappeared. Ezra helped Kanan up and brought him inside the tower. The teen brought Kanan over to his bed and laid him down on it. After making sure he was in a somewhat comfortable sleeping position, Ezra turned back over to the workbench and held up his nearly finished lightsaber and examined it.

He knew he probably shouldn't have been trying to do his own thing with a weapon he'd never built before, but he was in love with the idea of a blaster so much he had built one into the lightsaber. He happened to have the tech he wanted for it, but the blaster part wasn't the trouble, it was the lightsaber itself

Ezra opened himself to the Force and began to continue his work.

* * *

Hera had been delivering the intel to Fulcrum while Sabine and Zeb were asleep. So when she came back she expected them to be exactly the same as she had left them, and they were. Hera made her way over to the cockpit again and set the coordinates for Lothal.

Everything was quiet for quite some time until Zeb walked in yawning and sat down in the co-pilot's chair, "What are we up to?"

"Heading back to Lothal to pick up Ezra, Kanan, and the Phantom."

"Are they done with their _Jedi business_?"

"Hun, do I look like a logbook? I don't know."

The Lasat crossed his arms and responded, "I just assumed Kanan would have told ya if they were done or not."

"He hasn't, but I have no other missions for us to go on right now." Hera continued her piloting for a moment while Zeb looked down at a disc that was in between the chairs and picked it up. He examined it and questioned, "What is Bena Bara Bakk?"

Hera looked over at Zeb and shook in disgust, "A nightmare I can't get rid of."

Right on cue Sabine walked in and spoke up, "I have now officially run out of red paint, and your astromech is trying to kill me."

"Did you clean Chopper up after you were done?"

"He's _trying to kill me."_

Zeb let out a laugh and turned towards Sabine, "Welcome to the club, would you like to take the nightshift? It'll give me more sleep."

"Hah." Sabine let out with a fake energy. She heard the door open and she let out a squeak before she jumped into one of the chairs and hugged her knees to her chest. A full red astromech rolled in and as it approached Hera's chair Sabine slowly turned the chair around to be out of sight.

"How's it going Chop-" Hera turned and looked at the droid and chuckled, "Lookin good." The astromech let out a roar and the Twi'lek shrugged, "I don't know where Sabine is, why would I know?"

The droid beeped again and Hera narrowed her eyes at it, "You can't smell, you don't have the organs or the hardware." There was another roar from the droid before it rolled away as Hera shouted, "Don't talk to me with that mouth or I'll disable your binary functions." There was a growl from the droid as the door shut.

Sabine turned in her chair barely suppressing a laugh, Zeb was doing the exact same thing, but when the two made eye contact the two began to laugh and after a little while Hera joined in as well.

* * *

The Inquisitor was stationed at a computer, scanning through a heavy amount of files for something in particular. He found a file and read through it until he heard a door open. The Inquisitor's head rose up and responded, "I called you a while ago, Acolyte. Did you have trouble waking up?"

Vice stopped behind the Inquisitor and bowed their head; "Forgive me for being late, Master. And no, I had not been asleep."

"Then what exactly delayed your time?"

"Well, master, you had asked me to antagonize Bridger, so I was trying to connect with him through the Force."

"Did you succeed?"

"I am afraid not."

The Inquisitor opened up another file and responded, "Very well… it is not unexpected." After the Inquisitor read through the file a toothed grin appeared on his face, "How much do you know, Acolyte, about Jedi hiding after their purge?"

"Only what I had experienced first-hand. Some Jedi hide and renounce their ways, others hide and attempt to train the new generation in a pitiful way."

"Did any of the ones you…experienced first-hand, change their names? It is a fairly common practice from what I understand."

Vice was silent and crossed their arms, "I had never asked. Why?"

"I have found the identity of Bridger's master. Depa Billaba's last padawan matches in every single way, except of course the age. It seems our… _Kanan _is not a Jedi Knight. We have a padawan teaching a padawan it seems…"

"Does this reveal anything you didn't already suspect?"

The Inquisitor stood up from the computer and walked away with Vice following after him, "No, but I now know his background. Or at least the amount of training he may have experienced. I of course cannot account for what Billaba taught him firsthand, but from what was recorded I can see where he severely lacks training… or where he seemed to have difficulty."

"How can you be sure he did not teach himself anything during the past 15 years?"

"I cannot be sure. I predict that he learned very little, but he may learn more the longer he trains his padawan. We need to truly begin this mission now that we are fully prepared."

Vice stopped walking and spoke up with a hint of annoyance in their voice, "Alright then, Master. What exactly do you wish me to do?"

"The same as I told you before: torture the padawan in whatever way you can. Try to twist him and allow him to open his eyes to what you can see: the weakness of the light and the strength in the dark side. Have him see your way." The Inquisitor held his hand up as if he dismissed Vice and left the room with the door shutting behind him.

Vice turned back in the direction of their room and whispered to themselves, "So do I choose the physical or the mental torture first?"


	17. The Steps

**Wait which padawan will they torture. I'm pre try sure its kanan but im not positive."- rebels-lover**

_**Ezra. Although the Inquisitor is now informed Kanan is still technically a padawan, he will still be referring to him as the Jedi. However just because that is the mission doesn't mean Kanan and Ezra won't share an equal amount of pain.**_

"**How do you think of the idea if there is a species of Tookas that have wings"?- WindGoddess Rune**

_**A cat with wings? What's not to love!?**_

_**And before people ask: No. I'm not doing the bond thing. At least not the way that is popular around here. There's still a bond and it's strong but Ezra and Kanan aren't going to be in pain if one of them gets hurt, or be able to speak telepathically to one another. They'll be able to sense when something is wrong with the other one but not to extremes. Sorry if anyone wanted to see that.**_

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

Kanan stirred rather late into the morning of the next day. He opened his eyes only to realize that he was no longer outside of the tower. In fact from the angle he had no idea where he was at first. Then he sat up and realized he was on a bed inside the tower. He looked around and took in the scene and looked over to see Ezra with his head down asleep on the workbench. Kanan smiled slightly before getting up out of the bed.

He felt a little sore, like he had gone through a lot of stress or something of the sort. He didn't worry about it too much as he walked over to Ezra and shook the boy, "Ezra." the teen stirred and let out a yawn and mumbled with his eyes closed, "Just a few more minutes..."

The jedi was tempted to just shake Ezra and wake him up right then, but as he was about to Ezra pointed to a piece of cloth and mumbled, "It's done..." before starting to snore. Kanan let out a small chuckle and uncovered the cloth to see Ezra's finished creation. He looked at it and held it up to examine it. Upon seeing the trigger for a blaster he finally caught on to the whole idea.

_Unorthodox but creative... It's perfect for him._

Kanan placed the lightsaber back down on the workbench and messed up Ezra's hair before he heard a noise. Ezra shot up immediately whispering, "Someone's here."

"You sure?"

"It only makes that noise when someone is climbing the ladder." Ezra listened for a moment as the noise grew louder and he quickly ran around and placed rusty, broken locks on the doors, "Bucketheads."

"You can tell just from the noise?"

Ezra let out a sigh and filled up his bag with a couple of supplies he had around. He grabbed an old sack he had and covered up all of his helmet collection, turned out all the lights, and hid other stray objects. He pulled out a jar of what Kanan could only assume was dust, and he dusted up the place as much as he could, "No. But who else would we be getting a visit from? Hera would have called and people don't visit me." The teen ran over and grabbed his lightsaber off the workbench, hooked it into belt, and ran to the back wall and pulled back a part of the wall. Kanan looked at it and chuckled, "A hiding spot?"

The teen pulled Kanan into the wall and responded, "An abandoned communication tower is meant to stay abandoned, and if they're taking the ladder, we're not leaving anytime soon. So yeah. A hiding spot."

Ezra threw the rest of the dust out at the floor, covering up footprints that could have been left, and he shut the wall. The two listened as the noise eventually turned into footsteps and the door started to be barged into. The door finally broke open without too much effort and the footsteps steadily inspected the place. After a few minutes of shifting one of the troopers' voices finally stated, "Sir, this place seems to have been undisturbed for years."

"Yes... a little too undisturbed."

The two rebels recognized the voice immediately: it was Agent Kallus. The footsteps seemed to come closer and closer to the wall and a screeching noise could be heard. Ezra and Kanan held their breath for quite some time before Kallus' voice rung out, "We are wasting our time here. We should head back to the city and see if there was any more news of disturbances. Put a new lock on the door... we don't want anyone camping out in here."

The footsteps disappeared and the sound of the door shutting and locking could be heard loud and clear. The footsteps turned into the noise associated with the ladder, and then eventually disappeared altogether. Ezra moved to move the wall when Kanan grabbed his arm to stop him. Kanan closed his eyes and then leaned over towards Ezra and whispered as quietly as he could, "Someone is still out there."

Ezra let out an annoyed breath and the two waited for what felt like an hour. Kanan claimed to still feel the presence and refused to let them leave. Ezra finally grew impatient and removed a part of the floor in between the two of them. Ezra motioned for Kanan to follow him and he slipped down into the floor.

Kanan followed suit and Ezra moved the piece of the floor back to where it was. Ezra turned to Kanan and whispered, "There's another way out besides the ladder, but I haven't used it in years."

"Why didn't you say so before?"

"Well…"

Ezra opened up another piece of the floor, which led to a ladder that seemed to lead to a stairwell. When the two reached the stairwell, the broken pieces of the stairs were plain to see. Ezra motioned to the whole area and spoke; "I've avoided it since the platforms caved in on me when I was eleven."

Kanan place his hands on his hips and looked at the fall and responded with a quiet whistle, "I can imagine… so what… go down all these flights of stairs and then there's a way out?"

"You guessed it."

"Great, so lets try to be as quiet as possible. We don't want to alert the people upstairs or down."

The two began to make their way carefully down all the stairs. When they were down a few rotations, Kanan's foot gave way through one of the stairs, causing everything to shake. Ezra prepared for the worst until things calmed down. He helped his master up and whispered, "Is that your idea of _quiet_, master?

Kanan glared at him and was going to comment on it before his comm went off.

"_Specters 1 and 6, we've made it to Lothal." _Ezra smirked over the quiet comment and Kanan pushed him slightly so he could continue walking down the stairs and he grabbed the comm and responded, "Alright, get yourselves somewhere docked and please don't respond or communicate back to me until I give the okay."

He almost expected a response but gave a sigh of relief when he didn't get one. The two got to a point where the platform was completely gone and the two examined it before Kanan responded, "Eleven?"

"Eleven."

"Okay…" The Jedi looked down to see how far the distance was, and it was still a decent enough distance where they could fall and get seriously injured. So they both clearly had to find another way around. When Ezra was prepared to get ready to jump, Kanan attached a grapple to his blaster and shot it across.

Ezra looked at him confused and responded, "What? You want to cable walk? I'm not sure if that's-"

Kanan attached the cable to the wall and adjusted his gloves before grabbing the cable and swinging across. Ezra finally caught onto what was going on and rolled his eyes over how stupid he must have seemed. After Kanan made it across, Ezra started to do the same thing.

As he crossed, he felt the platform behind him break a hinge. Ezra stared at Kanan wide-eyed as Kanan motioned for him to move faster. The teen swung across faster until the platform began to give way. When it did give way, Ezra reached out towards Kanan, who grabbed his arm just in time. The platform plummeted to the ground and the loud crashing noise caused the two to cringe. There seemed to be a stir outside before Kanan mumbled, "Great…"

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault, Ezra. I would not blame you for this."

The two made their way down the stairs as fast as they could while still being careful. When they reached the bottom floor Kanan looked around to try and figure out where the door was. He turned to see a small little tunnel, which Ezra motioned for him to follow down.

At the end of the tunnel, it seemed to lead to two storm shelter-like doors. Ezra opened it up quickly and the dust that had been inside seemed to follow the two outside. They both coughed before looking around. They were a decent distance from the tower. They could a couple speed bikes left by the Empire. One 'trooper was up on the balcony waiting for whoever it was inside to leave. A couple others were guarding the base; probably looking for the source of the loud noise the two had made a few minutes before.

Kanan pulled out his comm and responded, "Alright we're clear."

"_What were you two doing?"_

"Avoiding detection."

"_Well now that you're done with that, if you could tell me your locations that would be splendid."_

The two force-sensitives looked at each other and back at the scene before Kanan replied, "I… I wouldn't come over to where we are. We parked the Phantom just outside of Central City but we might want to avoid picking it up for a little while longer."

There was a sigh on the other end before Hera replied, _"Acknowledged. Where are you two planning on hiding out then?"_

"Central City of course."

"_We'll all meet at the rendezvous point in 8 hours."_

"Sounds good, Specter 1 out."

Kanan looked over at Central City and began walking as he shouted to Ezra, "Well. We've got quite the walk, don't we?"

* * *

The two finally made it to the city in what felt like far too many hours. Within that time the two made conversation mostly about random and completely unrelated things to what was going on. There was the occasional advice given, and at one point Ezra gave a quick example of the blaster on his lightsaber and how his lightsaber functioned. Of course Kanan told him to put it away as soon as he did so and explained how a lightsaber wasn't something he could just use for the sake of using it. He had to be careful, and mindful of when he should use it.

When the two made it to the city, both did their best to avoid detection from the Imperials. When the two were about to enter a cantina the two stopped when a voice shouted, "Hey look, Blink is still alive!"

Ezra froze and let out an annoyed groan before Kanan turned to him, "What's the matter?"

The teen turned his head down an alleyway where a group of kids, some younger looking than Ezra, others older looking, were running at them. He mumbled towards Kanan, "They want something…"

The kids pulled Ezra into the alley and Kanan followed behind as he heard the kids keep shouting and trying to get their points across before Ezra finally spoke, "I can't understand you guys, one at a time." The groups of kids were quiet before they all shouted at once. This continued to happen repeatedly before Ezra pointed to the tallest of the kids and commanded, "Alright Twig, you talk."

The tall one, Twig, crossed his arms and rolled his eyes having to be the one to talk, "We caught wind of an Imperial search. We all knew they were looking for you. We were managing to disorient them fine until Switch took a sum of credits after telling them about your tower. We got worried you'd been killed."

"You were worried? What, worried you wouldn't be able to get anymore handouts from me?"

The group was quiet before the youngest one shouted, "Hey we need to eat too and sometimes getting a handout is the best we'll get!"

Ezra shook his head and rubbed his eye in annoyance, "You guys are so predictable."

One of the kids stepped forward and punched Ezra in the arm and shouted, "Listen Blink, we don't know where you've been but Switch keeps taking all of our food and you haven't been around to keep 'em on their toes. The great cycle has been disturbed and you're doing what exactly that's making the Empire be on you like fleas on a Lothcat?"

Kanan finally walked closer from the place he stood and questioned, "Who's Switch?"

"Who're you?"

The whole group of kids turned to the Jedi, Ezra turned to him and pointed, "This is Kanan. He's a friend."

The kids seemed to gasp in unison, which made Kanan raise an eyebrow before one of the girls in the group of kids spoke up, "So now Blink's got time for friends. What happened to _friends are just more mouths to feed._"

"Well _he_ feeds _me_. Not the other way around."

The kids turned to Kanan expectantly before he responded, "Sorry we don't have _that _much food."

"He still has food!"

"Get him!"

The kids all swarmed before Ezra walked in front of Kanan, "Back _off. _He asked you all a question."

The kids groaned before one of the kids finally stepped forward, this one was a young Rodian, "Switch is a street performer. _Magic tricks _are Switch's gig. But Rodi knows better, Switch... _switches_ their hands at last second and cons audience out. It's how Switch gets their credits and its how they beat Rodi to food. Stormtroopers love Switch, and Switch's learned the perfect pacing to keep them coming back and not thinking Switch cheats them."

Another kid stepped forward and shouted, "And lately they've been giving out street intel to the Empire. She's a traitor and scum like her shouldn't be stealing our food and getting those of us who can't fight thrown into academies or labor camps!"

Ezra held up his hands and spoke, "I'm sorry but I don't think I can do anything about it anymore. Not with the Empire after me like they are."

"At least let Switch know she can't be the way she is as long as Blink is around!"

All of the kids shouted out, "Yeah!" in agreement. Ezra looked unsure for a moment before finally replying, "I'll see what I can do. You guys stay out of trouble."

The kids laughed as they ran off. Kanan looked at Ezra and replied, "Do all of them not have parents?"

"No not all of them. Tackle and Shortie are both brothers and have a mother who also lives on the streets with them. Motor-mouth's dad is still alive, he just works for them Empire." Ezra turned around and faced Kanan replying, "We're better off here than we would be in a place like Tarkintown. But you just saw the bulk of my food and supply competition when I was on the streets."

As the two went to go back into the cantina Kanan asked, "Why did they call you Blink?"

Ezra laughed for a moment before turning to Kanan and smiling, "You know… _blink_ and you'll miss me."


	18. The Manipulation

**"While I was reading this, I was thinking that Ezra was kinda like Peter**  
**Pan and the kids were like the Lost Boys." -seleneraven1999**

**_Dang it, I wasn't subtle enough was I? That's pretty much what I was thinking when I wrote it. But it wasn't supposed to be exaaactly like that. Disney-syndrome. Don't kill me._**

**"I dont understand the last sentence, Blink and you'll miss me, what does it**  
**mean?"-DragonRobotkid676**

**_Okay so I got the idea for this nickname based on the short Property of Ezra Bridger. When the TIE Pilot went to shoot and kill Ezra for robbing but Ezra could sense he was going to do that so he moved extremely fast out of the way in order to dodge the shots. I got the idea that maybe when Ezra was on the streets he did something like this a lot to avoid detection from Stormtroopers and kids would pick up on that and give him a nickname focusing on his speed, and if you can move that fast… you could blink and not see him. Does that clear things up? I hope so, and I hope people are alright with that street-name._**

**_The "street-rats" on Lothal in my story have a reason for the strange nicknames. The others know immediately who to associate the name with, and they don't actually know the others' names. This is so when the Empire is looking for say… "John Lee" or something, they intentionally do not know who John Lee is. And maybe John Lee goes by the street name "Tyke", so the kids can claim to know "Tyke" but not "John Lee". I figured if the Empire was looking for Ezra and Kanan they would have a picture to match like they had with Tseebo. So the kids could have recognized the face._**

**_Long author's note is long but I wasn't sure how to fit this explanation into the story. So there you go._**

**_And actually, to make a long author's note longer. Any of you guys watch Idiot's Array yet? I couldn't stop laughing throughout it, it was great!_**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

Ezra seemed hopelessly distracted from that point on, and Kanan could sense it. Or at the very least he could look at Ezra's face and see how distant he was in thought. The Jedi nudged him slightly which caused Ezra to slightly spill a drink he was holding before he set it upright, "Are the kids stuck in your mind?"

"Sort of… its more about Switch."

"History?"

"It's a… rivalry I guess is how to put it."

Kanan raised an eyebrow and spoke, "A rivalry?"

Ezra nodded and took a sip of his drink before continuing, "Switch and I always got into fights over food and supplies, and usually I would win but not always." Ezra leaned his elbow against his table and rested his head on his palm, "Switch has been trying to get rid of me since I beat her in a contest that won me a home."

"A home?"

"The tower."

Kanan let out a chuckle and held out the words he spoke in almost a sing-song tone, "I knew there had to be some sort of fight over that tower."

"Anyway, Switch decided at some point to go about things a more _elegant _way and started selling the Empire information about where to find the other _Lothrats _in exchange for credits. Switch and I got into a mix-match of information one time and accidentally let our real names slip. Of course she'd rat me out when she got the chance."

"So what are you planning on doing if this is bothering you so much? Do you want to help the kids out?"

"No I don't want to help them out? Why would I help them out?"

Ezra was lying to himself and Kanan shot him a look, allowing him to only need to wait a few seconds before Ezra let out a groan and continued, "Okay I want to help them out, but I'm not sure how."

"You could… talk?"

Ezra let out a really loud laugh which caused Kanan to glare at him before he realized he was causing attention. He cleared his throat and spoke, "Um, Switch isn't much of a negotiator."

"Have you tried before?"

"N-no. But-"

Kanan gave Ezra the look again and Ezra let out the same groan and stood up, "I'll be back in a bit."

"You don't want me to come with you?"

"It won't take long and I'm not too far away."

Ezra ran out of the cantina and Kanan motioned to the bartender for another drink and waited until he received it. After taking a sip he saw someone approach out of the corner of his eye and sit in Ezra's seat as a familiar voice spoke, "Your padawan's become pretty charitable hasn't he?"

Kanan's head turned to the side to see Vice sitting in Ezra's seat. He went to move before Vice motioned around and spoke, "Don't do that. I had your little alert called off and said we confirmed you left Lothal, but I have plenty of troopers around here that'll make escape next to impossible with just one command. They're at the front door, the back door, and the smuggler door. Besides, I just want to talk. There's no harm in that is there?"

The jedi turned towards the door with concern and Vice recognized why and reassured in a cold and not actually reassuring way, "No one is after your padawan. I'm here for you, _Kanan._"

* * *

Ezra was not aware of the search call off, so he snuck through the back alley to get up on the rooftops. Once there, the raven-haired teen scanned the area in search of the one known as Switch. He walked along the edge and expected her to be on that particular street somewhere, since it was her turf.

After quite some time of walking on the rooftops, he was about to give up on the hunt, when he heard a voice.

"Alright Commandant, you seem to be guessing fairly well today. Are you sure you aren't up for one more go?"

Ezra peaked his head over an awning to see none other than Aresko standing in front of a box with five cups on it. He couldn't see Switch from his angle, but Ezra recognized that voice. Ezra rolled his eyes over the idea that an Imperial was playing this game but he continued watching.

"Well… I guess if luck is on my side today it won't hurt to try once more." Aresko placed a credit down on the table, which was collected before a marble was placed in one of the cups. Switch continuously mixed and matched the cups throwing the marble into the air and catching it with another cup. They continued this for about a minute before the cups were flipped upside-down.

"Three guesses. You know the drill right? First guess you get triple, second double, third guess normal, fourth gue-"

"Nothing." The commandant pointed to one cup, which Switch pulled up and showed how nothing was underneath. He tried a second one, which had the same result.

When the third cup came, Switch tilted their hand forward just enough, and Ezra watched as the marble slid out quickly from under the cup and into Switch's hand. They kept their palm down and lifted the cup revealing what was supposedly nothing.

When Aresko asked which cup contained the marble, Switch brought their palm to the edge of the cup and slipped it under as they lifted it. In description, it seemed like something easily caught by the eye. However, it took Ezra many years to figure out Switch's palm slip technique. It was flawless when not watching from an air-view.

Switch gave a typical "ooh I'm sorry" result she would normally give before she threw a credit up at Aresko and claimed it was for him as an "added bonus" and she wished him luck in the future. When the commandant was completely out of view, Ezra dropped down from the roof right in front of the box. Switch jumped quickly thinking there was some sort of bandit attack before she realized it was Ezra.

Switch had, for the most part, the typical Lothal-human look. She was tan, but her hair was black and tied back and held by a headband. She wore a red shirt with black pants and had a blaster hooked into her belt. She looked a year or two older than Ezra and upon standing up, it was clear that she also beat him in the height department.

"Well well well. If it isn't Blink Bridger, the man of the hour." Switch quickly moved and placed their credits, marbles, and cups into a bag slung over their shoulder, "Someone came by looking for you er… five hours ago? I couldn't tell ya, I was busy with th-"

"Save it, Switch. The others told me yo-"

"Told about the tower? Oh come on kid you know I wouldn't give info if I thought you were actually there." Switch winked at Ezra which caused him to glare at her. She kept looking back and forth as if to see if anyone else was coming before stating, "Where have you been anyway? Travelling the galaxy?"

"Um…"

Switch turned to Ezra with widened eyes and replied, "I was kidding but oh my. Where did you manage to get a transport of-"

Ezra held up his hand as if to silence her. It worked, and Ezra spoke in a serious tone, "The other loth-rats told me you've been selling them out for credits."

"Selling them out? Oh dear wherever would they get that idea?" Switch flicked a marble into the air and caught it stating, "Is it betrayal if they're getting fed in an Imperial Academy?"

"So you have been!"

"Oh now _you _save it, Blink. You can't survive in this galaxy playing fair games with the other kiddies. People aren't that kind. Now if you'll excuse me I need to-"

Ezra went to grab Switch's arm to keep them from leaving before Switch held their blaster up to Ezra's head, "Ey now. I know how you do with blasters."

Without thinking about consequences, Ezra pulled his lightsaber/blaster out of his belt and brought it up to Switch's head.

This brought forth an audience of loth-rats peaking out over crates and junk piles, as the two teens stood opposite each other with a blaster towards their opponent's head.

Switch's eyes widened as they let out in a whisper, not having expected Ezra to have pulled out a blaster back on them, "Well, this just got interesting."

* * *

Vice ordered a drink for themselves while Kanan sat there in silence, waiting for whatever this hooded figure had to say. No one else in the cantina seemed to pay them any mind, it seemed… strangely natural to them based on their reactions.

Kanan waited for a moment before he asked, "Is the Inquisitor around here for something?"

"The Inquisitor?" Vice turned in the direction of Kanan and replied with almost a laugh in their voice, "Why would the Inquisitor be here."

"You aren't an…apprentice?"

Vice received their drink and took a sip before continuing with the glass still in their hand, "Inquisitors do not have apprentices. They can assist temporarily in the training of a new Acolyte until they are brought to a more… appropriate location. No. I am not an apprentice to _the _or any inquisitor."

"There are more inquisitors?"

"I did not mean for this to be an interview about me. I am here to talk about you. Wouldn't you much rather talk about yourself?"

"Honestly. No."

Vice finished up their drink and replied, "You'll have to deal then." they placed the empty glass down and continued, "I am prepared to give you a choice we do not give many jedi. But you are a special exception."

"Special exception?"

"Why yes. Have you ever heard the phrase _leave the innocent kath hound innocent_?"

"That's a Dantooine expression isn't it?"

Vice didn't answer the question but instead continued, "Domesticating kath hounds is popular for a hunter. You can bring out the best and worst in them. However, you can keep on pushing and pushing for that power to come out until you eventually break that kath hound. You make them hostile, untrusting. No matter how kind you try to be to a kath hound the simplest action can break one. Your best leaving them out in the wild to discover themselves on their own." Vice cracked their knuckles continuing, "I know a man who had a kath hound. His friend wished for one of his own but domesticating kath hounds, for about five years or so, was illegal. So the man took his envy and pushed the kath hound until it eventually killed the friend. The kath hound was his, and he kept on abusing that kath hound until the kath hound dropped dead."

Kanan shook his head and replied, "Interesting but I'm not sure what you're getting a-"

"I'm here to talk about _your _kath hound."

"I don't…" Kanan sat confused for a moment before his eyes filled with realization, but Vice spoke first, "I'm giving you the chance to keep you, and your padawan, from breaking. Specifically your padawan. Now I know you want to go on a huge tangent about how you'd never let him fall to the dark side but I'm not saying that. I'm saying _let the boy go _and save him the breaking process."

Kanan glared at Vice and responded, "You aren't going to break me or my padawan. Our faith is too strong and letting him go would only cause him to come back. He wants to learn, and I'm not going to push him away."

"You wouldn't break his heart to protect him? You'd rather put him in danger and let him suffer?"

Kanan's face stayed at stoic as it ever did, and all Vice did in return was break the glass. A couple people looked over as Vice looked at the cuts in their glove, then looked over at Kanan.

Although Kanan couldn't see the rest of their face, gold eyes pierced through the dark right at him. Vice took the glove off which temporarily distracted Kanan from the subject before Vice turned back to him, "Your padawan is dying."

"I'm sorry?"

"Can't you hear him? I am not entirely sure but perhaps I heard a blaster." Vice's voice seemed to contain some sort of sadistic pleasure in speaking, "Don't you want to protect him?"

"I don't know what you're trying to pull here."

Vice raised their hand up and stared at a wound on their hand and spoke, "I told you, your padawan is dying. I can hear him screaming. He's calling for you."

**"_Hear him screaming."_**

Kanan felt a pressure in his head as Vice stood up, "Remember the last time someone died, calling for you?"

**"_Calling for you."_**

"What are you doing Kanan Jarrus?"

Kanan grabbed his head as he felt a sharp pain go through and Vice continued, "Run to him. He needs your help. Or are you afraid of what's to come?"

**"_Hear him screaming?"_**

Kanan opened his mouth to speak when he heard a quiet screaming in the distance. He recognized the screaming. It was Ezra. Kanan's eyes widened with fear as he ran out the door of the cantina.

He wasn't sure what direction Ezra was in, and for whatever reason he couldn't sense Ezra. The jedi looked around frantically, with his heart rate increasing more and more. He heard the door open and saw Vice out of the corner of his eye place a hand on his shoulder, "The screams sound like they're coming from the center market area. I know there were plenty of soldiers around there. Maybe they'll take him to a med bay, and after that… who knows what the Empire had planned for him."

**"_Hear him screaming?"_**

**"_Calling for you."_**

"Kanan! _Help_!"

"Ezra!" Kanan ran where he felt he heard the noise echo from, his emotions were frantic and he kept hearing his own thoughts echoing over and over.

_Not again._

_I won't lose someone again._

_Not when they are calling for me._

**"_Calling for you."_**

Vice watched Kanan dart down the street, and walked the other direction. When they did, they saw two kids in the street seemingly threatening each other with blasters to the other's heads. From what they could tell, negotiations were being set in place for something.

Ezra was one of them. Perfectly fine.

Not dying. Not being arrested.

_I hope your ready for him, Inquisitor. He's coming for you._


	19. The Chases

**"This all seems like just a trap for Kanan."**

_**I mean, technically it is a trap for both of them. But every plan starts somewhere doesn't it? Have fun with part two.**_

**"Would you mind telling how you've seen Idiot's Array?"-Moniker **

_**I couldn't tell you what website it was I just Googled Idiot's Array to see reviews and I stumbled across it.**_

_**Enjoy getting two chapters in one day. This will not be common, though it may happen again. I was just in a writing mood today.**_

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

For there not being anyone out in the open, it sure felt crowded. Obviously the kids had expected Ezra to go after Switch so they all found hiding spots. But both of the teens could notice their heads peering out from every which way. Switch looked at Ezra with a raised eyebrow, "You brought an audience?"

"Not intentionally."

"Figures." Switch moved the blaster away from Ezra's head and Ezra did the same as Switch turned around, "You kids run along or I'll give you a _real _reason to hide."

At the words, the kids scattered, and Switch turned back to Ezra with their head going slightly up in approval, "Alright. If blaster threats aren't going to work anymore then I guess I have no choice but to listen, don't I?"

"You do."

"Because you could completely wreck me in a fight."

"That's right."

"Just like you did on Ration Day."

"Exact- HEY." Ezra's face showed offense at the comment, and Switch stole a laugh. The reactions seemed to hint that whatever happened on Ration Day seemed to have ended in Switch winning a fight.

Ezra walked closer to Switch and spoke, "I'm not asking you to give handouts, I'm asking you to not get these kids arrested. If you're having so much fun giving the Empire information why don't you just join it?"

"Blink I just go where the money goes, and the Imperials are paying pretty prices to get children in the ranks of the Empire. Probably more than a slaver can get."

"What can I do to get you to stop?"

"_That's _the question, isn't it?"

Ezra crossed his arms and responded, "You want my tower, don't you?"

Switch grinned for a moment and replied, "Normally, yes. However, you seem to have it all figured out, you're traveling the galaxy? I'm not sure how your doing it, but if you still have that hook-up: I want off this rock."

Ezra scoffed and crossed his arms, "You wouldn't survive off Lothal. The galaxy doesn't operate on cons, scams, and dishonesty."

"It doesn't? That's sure what it sounds like to me." Switch leaned in towards Ezra and placed a hand on his shoulder, "I will stop with this business if you can get me off of this planet. If not, I know a couple of rats who's birthdays are coming up. Nothing like fresh thirteen year olds for labor camps, no?"

"You're a monster, Switch."

"I'm just a product of the times, Blink." Switch looked around and seemed to watch something behind Ezra before backing up, "When you make the smart decision, you know where and how to find me." Then she jumped up on her box, clung to the awning, and quickly pulled herself up to the rooftops.

Ezra crossed his arms and pondered the request. Would he actually get the crew to drop Switch off somewhere? Where would Switch even go? She sure didn't seem to have a plan in mind, but he didn't want to let the other kids down. He couldn't believe himself. If this were before his training he wouldn't have cared about the other kids, but he cared now. At least enough to not want them suffering.

The teen turned around and felt his heart skip a beat upon seeing Vice standing there, "Its nice to see you again, _padawan._"

* * *

Kanan made it to the main markets and looked around for his padawan. He could still hear the screaming, and the voices had slowly changed into his own voice in his head. He was fearful for Ezra, to the point where it didn't feel healthy.

He scanned the area, and as he walked further into the market, the screams got louder. He took a look at a couple of the merchants and couldn't understand why they weren't reacting to the screaming. Was this common? He sure hoped now.

That was when Kanan saw two stormtroopers bringing a covered stretcher into a shuttle. At first he didn't think much of it, but noticed the restraints and could have sworn he saw something move. As he approached it he heard Ezra call for him and he ran towards them.

Kanan waited outside the shuttle for the two stormtroopers to leave before he entered the shuttle as silently as possible, to not draw attention. However, once he was in there, the screaming stopped. The voices stopped.

Kanan walked over to the stretcher and pulled the cover back to see a bunch of meilooruns underneath the sheet. He went to turn around to see a stormtrooper standing there, Kanan held up a hand with a tortured wave and the stormtrooper let out a grunt, "What is it with you criminals and your fruit? We stopped shipping in boxes for this exact reason."

The Jedi pointed behind him and looked confused, "So you put them on a stretcher?"

"_Most _people don't search stretchers where the dead could be for fruit." The trooper then held up their blaster shouting, "You're under arrest!"

Kanan rolled his eyes before holding his hand out and pushing the stormtrooper back. The Jedi ran out of there while pondering the situation. _Where is Ezra? Is he dying? Is he dead? Was this all a set-up?_

The Jedi felt a familiar presence, an unwanted familiar presence. He looked in the direction he felt the presence in, and found himself locking eyes with the Inquisitor. Who was in the middle of some sort of discussion with a general prior to seeing Kanan. However it was clear Kanan was a priority and the Pau'an excused himself before walking in Kanan's direction.

Without a second thought, Kanan found himself running down one of the alleys.

* * *

Ezra backed away from Vice who clicked their tongue and whispered, "Typical." Then looked around before pulling out their lightsaber, "And since there are no kids around at the moment." Vice ignited it immediately.

Vice expected the teen to pull out their slingshot but was pretty surprised to see Ezra pull out a lightsaber in response, "Oh."

Ezra's face showed a clear focus before Vice grinned, "A lightsaber huh? Someone did upgrade…" they stepped forward and clashed with Ezra quickly, but it was clear he could not hold up. Vice let out a sigh of disappointment, "A toy is just a toy if you don-"

Vice felt the blaster shot from the lightsaber in the worst way. The cloaked figure held the spot they were shot and mumbled, "I've never seen one do that."

Ezra wasn't going to wait for Vice to recover, so he quickly deactivated his lightsaber and ran off down the street. Vice started to breath heavily, before they began to run after the padawan as fast as they could. The teen looked to his right and quickly slipped down one of the alleyways, knocking a bunch of stuff behind him to make more of an obstacle for his pursuer. Vice was managing to keep up fine, dodging crates and barrels that soon began to obstruct their path. Vice was about to catch up when Ezra lept up onto a roof, jumped a couple of rooftops, and then jumped off the roof, rolling to break his fall more.

Ezra stopped for a moment, looking up to see if Vice lost his trail. He heard footsteps approach from around the building rather than the rooftops and saw Vice catch up. He let out an annoyed breath before he began to run again, but this time Vice lifted up their hand and the teen found himself levitating in the air instead of running on the ground.

Vice stopped their running and dropped Ezra to the ground as they approached him. Vice felt tired out, they were using their Force powers far more than they had in quite some time. They kept their arm out, holding Ezra to the ground so he couldn't get up and run. They activated their lightsaber one more time and aimed to slash at Ezra's legs before they heard a beeping noise.

Vice looked down just in time to see a smoke bomb detonate right in their face.

* * *

Kanan's pursuer was not tiring out or being thrown off in the slightest. When he was certain he'd gotten the Inquisitor off of his trail, he would show up again. Kanan was almost sliced to pieces on multiple occasions during this run when he'd run a little too far ahead.

The Jedi felt more drained than he should, he wasn't sure what to blame it on but it was making the overall experience a nightmare with how many close calls there were on his life. Kanan hadn't pulled out his lightsaber once in order to not draw attention from anyone else. Stormtroopers didn't seem to be catching on to the fact the Pau'an was clearly after him.

The next time Kanan ran down an alleyway he saw something he didn't expect: a line of children blocking his path. He moved to jump over them but the kids stopped him from running. He was restrained, but not for the reason he expected when he was. The kids all swarmed together and more kids jumped down from the roofs and in hidden crevices. Kanan was in the middle of the children, at least thirty of them.

When the Inquisitor apparently turned down the alley, he just stared. He could feel Kanan's presence, but he couldn't see the Jedi. The Pau'an cleared his throat and spoke, "Children. I am looking for a dangerous criminal who is at larg-"

"Buzz off!"

"We've got more important things ta do!"

"Take your Empire business somewhere else!"

The Inquisitor placed his arms behind his back in a military-like style before continuing, "I will have you all arrested for treason against the Empire."

"No one is here!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!"

"Then you wouldn't have a problem disassembling for a moment so I could pass?"

While the kids were distracting the Inquisitor, the kids had gotten to work. One of the kids pulled Kanan's arm armor and shirt off and then threw an old robe on Kanan. Four of the kids restraining Kanan brought him over a sewer grate, where they opened it up and the four kids and Kanan dropped down into the sewer. They fixed the grate and one of the kids Ezra named earlier, Twig, tied his hair back and put on Kanan's shirt and armor. All of this happened in a matter of thirty seconds.

When the kids disbanded, Twig had run off to the end of the alleyway. When they Inquisitor had him in their line of vision, Twig took off. The Inquisitor ignored the presence he had otherwise felt, and went after the one he saw running.

In the sewers, one of the kids activated a visor, which provided plenty of light. It blinded the group for a moment, and Kanan pulled away from the kids' restraining and asked, "Why did you all just do that?"

The four kids looked at each other and whispered before nodding and replying in unison, "Your Blink's friend." There was silence for a moment before one of them mumbled, "And you have food."

Kanan repressed a laugh as he looked around and spoke, "So, what way is the safest way to go, then?"

The four kids eagerly pulled him further down the sewer path.

* * *

Ezra had gotten himself out of Vice's grasp all thanks to the distraction from the smoke bomb. And he knew without even having to look who to thank. Ezra ran down the alleyway and looked to the right to see Sabine. He grinned and shouted, "Man I can't stop appreciating your miracles."

"Where's Kanan?"

"Probably still at the cantina?"

Zeb appeared behind him replying, "Nope. We just left there. You two are terrible at keepin' track of time."

The three rebels heard running approaching from the alley Ezra just left and his eyes widened as he shouted, "We need to get out of here _now!"_

"You don't have to tell us twice, _infant._" Zeb replied with Ezra letting an annoyed groan at the nickname as the three rebels got themselves quickly out of the area.


	20. The Opinion

_**Sorry about the "delay" for this chapter, I've been a little sick and busy. Whenever I went to go write a chapter I would just not be in the mood to write. But here I am now!**_

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

The Inquisitor was not entirely sure why the Jedi suddenly became hard to keep up with.

It was almost as if he suddenly knew the mapping out of Central City's streets. At first he had associated with going into a section of the city that he was perhaps more familiar with. That was only for a few minutes though. There was a point where the Inquisitor started to feel as though the Jedi was harder to detect through the Force.

The Inquisitor let out a hissing noise as he allowed himself to go faster, the Jedi seemed to trip up and it made it all the easier to grab hold of him. The Pau'an turned them around and knew exactly why it was harder to sense the Jedi.

This was not Kanan Jarrus.

There was a clear irritation on his face, and there was absolutely no way he was going to just walk away from this child. Instead, the Inquisitor took a heavier hold on Twig's arm and started to pull him away despite the struggling.

"You do not understand the business you are interfering with, child. Empire business is not something to take lightly, and you will soon understand the consequences of your actions."

The Inquisitor brought Twig up to stormtroopers and had the child handcuffed before stating, "This child is under arrest for high treason against the Empire."

Twig's eyes widened as he struggled, "High treason? All I did was put on someone else's clothes and run! I had no-"

"Do not try to defend yourself child, you and I are both aware of the actions you committed."

"But high trea-!?"

The Inquisitor pulled out a device and snapped it onto Twig's mouth; it rendered him unable to speak, even though he tried desperately to. The Pau'an's face showed slight amusement over this before he turned away from him and walked elsewhere. Twig still struggled as he was led away.

The Pau'an closed his eyes to search for Jarrus' presence. He first sensed the Acolyte, and then sensed Bridger, but he knew that situation was being dealt with. After a bit of time, he found the presence. It was underground, and slowly going further and further away from the city. The Inquisitor then realized where he was and turned to a group of four stormtroopers, "All of you. Follow me."

* * *

The three fleeing rebels continued firing back at Vice with their blasters, which was only causing their enemy to slow down significantly. They couldn't stop Vice with just blaster fire, that was becoming apparent. So finally Sabine threw back another one of her smoke bombs and it detonated. She knew this was one of her colored ones, and she was disappointed she didn't have the time to turn around and see it, but they needed to get out of there.

Vice stood in the smoke and closed their eyes sensing for the rebels, particularly Ezra, and when they found him they reached into their pocket and pulled out a small metal piece that looked like a laser pointer. They activated it, and it was revealed to be an extremely small, very thin, green lightsaber. Its effectiveness in combat could be questionable

However, at the very least it would be effective in combat for what Vice was about to do.

Vice closed their eyes and sensed through the smoke and threw the lightsaber low to the ground. It spun in the direction of the target and Vice let out a sadistic chuckle when they heard the scream that resulted from it.

Ezra fell to the ground immediately, the pain in his heel unbearable. The two other rebels turned to the boy, who kept trying to stand but inevitably failed. Sabine crouched down to see the back of Ezra's right boot sliced through, almost burnt. She wouldn't be able to check out the status of the injury right at that moment but whatever hit him went through the boot and judging by the placement she hoped it hadn't hit a tendon.

Zeb helped the teen up and Sabine kept her blasters drawn and pointed at the smoke. Vice walked out slowly and picked up something that lay on the ground (Sabine wasn't sure why and wouldn't have associated it with anything) before the figure spoke, "So, I started with an impression. What's your opinion of me now, padawan?"

Sabine shot at Vice who pulled out their lightsaber and deflected it. Zeb began to take off with Ezra in his arms; he pulled out the comm and shouted, "Eh Specter 2, are you still at rendezvous?"

"_Yes I am. Do you have our boys?"_

"We have one."

"_Please tell me it's at least Specter 6."_

"It's Specter 6, we're gonna need a check on injuries though."

Ezra looked back and watched Sabine try and hold off Vice as much as she could, at least enough to get Ezra and Zeb out of there. Sabine reached for something in her belt and threw it in the air. After a few seconds she detonated it, releasing some sort of white liquid down on Vice.

The black robes were covered and seemed ineffective for a moment before Vice found it harder to move. They seemed stiffer, and almost attached to the ground. For the sake of things Sabine threw another smoke bomb, which released an orange color. She turned around and ran shouting, "Did you see that?!"

Ezra managed a grin through the pain as he shouted, "It looks great Sabine."

As the rebels turned the corner to reach rendezvous, the smoke cleared revealing an orange colored Vice, who was unable to move, Vice whispered to themselves, "What is this… instant drying glue? Who would even think to use that?"

* * *

Kanan kept trying to get a signal in the sewers but he wasn't sure if he was out of range or jammed. Some of the kids came up with crazy reasons why it wasn't working. One told a story about a loth-wolf in the sewers that ate frequency signals and another kid said that sewers were built for hiding so why should they need communication devices?

Either way, he couldn't let the Ghost know he was fine.

The kids eventually came across a diverging path and the kids stared confused and Kanan looked at the kids saying, "You kids _do _know your way around, right?"

The shortest one responded, "Of course we do!" they then turned to the one that appeared to be the oldest and mumbled, "Curls?"

"Um…"

The curly haired child (which is where they got their nickname from) stepped forward and seemed to stare knowing the direction for a moment before they started pointing between the two mumbling, "Loth-cat, Loth-rat, Loth-wolf, run-"

Kanan stared at the kids in disbelief mumbling, "You're kidding me."

"Pick a path and all is do-"

There was a blaster shot that rung through the sewer and the kids let out a scream and ducked to the ground. Kanan looked around to find the source of the shot, which appeared to not be directly in the area but he started to hear footsteps approaching faster after the screams. Kanan pulled the kids up from the ground and spoke, "Alright: Curls, Shortie, Tackle, Scar. I need all of you to be as quiet as possible."

All of the kids nodded in obedience before Kanan began to push them down the path Curls had pointed to before the blaster fire. They continued until they heard the stormtroopers gain on them. Kanan pointed for the kids to scatter and did his best to hide well, Scar turning off the light visor.

At that moment, there only seemed to be stormtroopers. Kanan wanted to know if the Inquisitor was there but he didn't want to sense him through the force if he was indeed there. Instead they all remained pressed against the sewer.

The stormtroopers shined lights around until it hit Shortie's face. The kids grinned nervously as the stormtrooper went to go and grab the child, but out of nowhere Tackle flew out and tackled the stormtrooper to the ground. Kanan remembered the note Ezra made earlier about the two being brothers, and assumed he was just doing the protective thing.

There were three more stormtroopers there but by the time they turned around Tackle had gone back into hiding and the stormtrooper remained face first in the sewer water. The other troopers helped him out as the others stood on guard.

"Come out and show yourselves."

They were met with silence before a familiar, evil voice rung through the sewers, "It is just four children. They are afraid." The voice let out a sigh before replying, "I am willing to let all of you children go and keep you from whatever punishment you would otherwise receive, so long as you give up and turn in your criminal."

Kanan knew it was the Inquisitor, however it was dark wherever he stood. The Jedi did not want the children to get in any more trouble over him, and he was about to step forward and turn himself in before he heard.

"There's no criminal here." Was in Scar's voice

"Yeah! We heard the blaster and thought we were going to be killed." Was continued in Curls' voice.

"Your criminal is probably long gone." Was chimed in by Tackle.

"Get lost ya scum!" Was thrown in at the end by none other than Shortie.

The Inquisitor let the word "scum" echo for a moment throughout the sewers before he spoke, "Arrest them."

There were then four blaster shots, not from the stormtroopers. The first three hit their targets, the three stormtroopers, but the last one missed the Inquisitor. The kids began to scurry through the tunnel and all of them still stopped to pull Kanan out of his hiding spot and run.

Kanan pulled away and whispered, "You kids get out of here."

"But Kanan-"

"I don't want you kids hurt."

The four looked between each other and ran out as Shortie shouted, "You better be still getting us our food."

Kanan rolled his eyes and turned to see a red lightsaber illuminate the area, which swung at him in enough time for him to pull out his own lightsaber. The blue and the red were the only light in the sewers now, but he didn't need to see anything else.

"So, you are willing to put more children's lives at risk to protect your own? You couldn't possibly tell me they did it of their own volition."

"Apparently, it is possible to tell you."

The Inquisitor said no more as the two began to fight, Kanan trying his best to travel as far backwards as he could, hoping to eventually find the end of the sewers and make a run for it.

* * *

The three rebels were almost at the rendezvous point when Ezra saw at the distance, Twig being led into a detention center. He knew it was Twig because of how thin they were, but what really had caught his attention was the fact he was wearing Kanan's clothes.

Ezra pointed out the situation to Sabine and Zeb, but the two insisted that while it was important to find Kanan that they get him back to the ship to get his heel looked at. When they had reached the rendezvous point, Hera lowered the ship just enough for them to get on and take off.

They brought Ezra to the main room where Sabine began to take a look at his leg and Zeb ran into the cockpit to tell Hera about Ezra's heel and Twig in Kanan's clothes.

Hera would need to send Sabine and Zeb out again to help, somehow pilot the ship, and make sure Ezra didn't try to play hero with an injury. She could have Chopper pilot but she wanted to be close enough to pick up Kanan right away if he was found, and Chopper was better with taking over the flying when they were in space. She knew she couldn't leave Chopper with Ezra though.

_Kanan, why do you always make my job harder?_


	21. The Breakout

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

The Mandalorian and the Lasat already knew where to check first for their missing Specter, and it was all thanks to Ezra. If he hadn't noticed the boy in Kanan's clothes, they both sure wouldn't have. So the two had to plan a break in to an Imperial detention center hoping the kid they were helping would help them to find Kanan.

The issue of course was getting in there, and the two hid to discuss a game plan. Zeb suggested to just run straight in and open fire, but Sabine spoke up about high level security and how running in their was a suicidal idea. If Ezra was there he could have snuck through the ventilation system and allowed them access, but he wasn't there.

The two had settled on a plan involving smoke bombs and Sabine was about to ask Hera if they could have Chopper for another part before a voice spoke up, "You know, for breaking into a detention center, you two sure don't seem at all experienced."

The two looked up to see Switch (although neither would have known it was Switch) up on the edge of the rooftop leaning with an arm on their hand. The girl smiled and replied, "I can help you two out if you cut me a deal."

"We're all s-"

"I know you two are with Blink."

Sabine and Zeb looked at each other confused before Zeb replied, "We don't know anyone named Blink."

Switch rolled their eyes and corrected herself, "Ezra Bridger."

The two seemed go on alert as she jumped own and put her hands in her pockets, "I'll help you two get into the detention center if you can agree to fly me off of this planet. I don't care where, I'm just sick of Lothal."

Sabine shook her head and replied, "Sorry, we aren't taking anymore passengers."

"Then you both _will _get yourselves killed."

"I doubt that." Zeb chimed in as Switch turned towards him irritated and replied, "If anyone goes in there with weapons drawn or any intentions of breaking in, there is a gas released that will knock you out instantly. It goes through helmets, goes through armor, and it goes through skin. The high security officials stay behind clear walls of… I don't know what it is but keeps them from getting knocked out. Even if they knock out their own Stormtroopers in the process." Switch crossed their arms and replied, "Had it specially installed for the street-kids who try to escape. We're tricky."

The two rebels looked at one another before turning to Switch, "So what's your plan?"

"Are you agreeing to get me off of this planet?"

"Yeah yeah, whatever. Just get us in and we'll find ya somewhere. So what bright idea do you have?" Zeb seemed clearly annoyed by the agreement and Switch opened up her bag. She looked through it for a moment before pulling out two sets of handcuffs.

"It's time to… _arrest _you."

"Where did you eve-"

"Now, this won't look good if you guys don't look a little beaten up." Switch spoke her thoughts, then she pulled out her blaster, set it to stun, and shot Zeb in the head.

Sabine got up on the defensive and pulled out her blaster to fire at Switch, who rolled to Zeb and put the handcuffs on him. Zeb was still conscious but dizzy on the ground. He shouted, "Karabast!" before grumbling something about a terrible headache. Sabine shot once at Switch who rolled out of the way shouting, "Woah woah woah! I'm going to keep your helmet on and if you're in that armor I don't need to have physical damage or roughage done!"

At that moment Sabine realized what Switch was trying to do, she didn't like it, but she went to put her blaster away before Switch replied, "Lets have me take the weapons, you know? Just so they aren't taken when you get in there."

Sabine really did not like that suggestion. She kept everything else, but handed Switch the blaster. Switch somehow managed to put everything into her bag,,including Zeb's bo-rifle, and Sabine tried to figure out how she managed that one. She put the handcuffs on Sabine and then looked over the scene, helped Zeb up off the ground and she clapped her hands, "Alright, lets turn you two in."

Switch pulled a chain and connected the two handcuffs so she could bring the two without them "running off". As Switch began to lead the way she stopped and pointed up to the roof and shouted, "I know you're up there Motor-mouth! Keep quiet about this until _after _we're done."

Sabine looked around and noticed there were about four or five children hiding around and eavesdropping. She wondered if it had always been like this on Lothal because she never noticed it before.

Switch led the way to the detention center and when she entered she got quite a few stares. She made her way to the front, which was blocked off by what looked like glass with reflective shields up and she spoke to the person behind it, "I caught two of the rebels you were on a search for."

There were even more stares before Switch spoke, "So you can take these two if you give me the bounty you had for them. You said you'd give more for alive."

Sabine's eyes widened, although it couldn't be seen because of the helmet, and she spoke, "Did y-"

"Shh." Switch murmured under her breath. A couple stormtroopers went and searched the two rebels, taking mostly Sabine's bombs and something they deemed suspicious in Zeb's pocket ("That's a rock ya bucketheads. It isn't gonna detonate.") after confirming it was Sabine and Zeb, the glass was opened and they were allowed through. Or at least, Sabine and Zeb were. But before they were taken, Switch bumped into Sabine and within the span of three seconds managed to put the blaster back in its holster, give Sabine a detonator, and slipped a handcuff key into Sabine's hands.

They were led out, Switch was paid, and she waited just a little longer to see what the two would do now that they were past the main security.

Sabine motioned at Zeb in some sort of cue, which made him stare in confusion before before she moved up both of her hands and flicked her nose. Then he understood, and the Lasat began to fake a sneeze. The guards stopped as he replied, "Sorry, when I sneeze I sneeze loud and sometimes things sha- sha-" he then sneezed again, which sent the two troopers off balance and Sabine lowered her legs and tripped them up. She used the key to get Zeb out of the handcuffs, and then Zeb took the key and helped out Sabine. The two knocked the two floored bucketheads out, Sabine taking a cell access key out of their pockets, and the two looked around.

"Alright Sabine, what now?"

"We look in the cells for the kid with Kanan's clothes."

The two clearly had to operate fast, but fortunately Lothal didn't usually have so much crime so there didn't seem to be too many cells. There were a couple of smugglers in there, and there was finally a cell with a bunch of street-kids. They glanced through it before they saw the boy and Zeb pointed, "You there, you Twig?"

The boy's eyes lightened up as he turned and ran over to the front of the cell. He had a device pressed to his lips and Sabine let out a gasp, "Why would they do something like that?"

Zeb turned to Sabine confused, "Huh?"

Sabine opened up the cell and all of the kids ran out but stuck to the area as Sabine pointed to the device, "This is a de-vocular implant."

"Eh..De-vo what now?"

Sabine looked closer at the implant replying, "De-vocular implants are instant effect implants that were created to silence those that spoke out against the Empire to a_ high degree_. It keeps them from protesting and getting others to rally by literally releasing chemicals to eventually destroy the vocal chords. But…" Sabine looked Twig in the eyes and questioned, "Did you speak out against the Empire?"

Twig shook his head and pointed to Kanan's clothes and ran in place. Both of the rebels could not understand him and they looked at the two other kids that were also in the cell and Zeb spoke, "A'right… ya Lothrats get free passes out." the kids looked excited but Twig looked distressed as he tried again to pull at the implant but Sabine stopped him, telling the kid he might accidentally rip it out. Twig looked at Sabine and his eyes screamed _do you have a better option?_

Sabine let out a sigh and shook her head, "I don't know how to remove an implant as highly sophisticated as a de-vocular implant. I'm sorry."

The two rebels decided it was best to start breaking out of there. Zeb didn't have his bo-rifle but he at least had his strength. When the five escaped convicts ran down the hall they were met with no opposition. Passing by the two stormtroopers they had downed just a few minutes ago. When they got to the front room, the breakout officially began.

Switch saw the group on the other side of the glass and knew it was time for her to do something to distract the outside party. Switch pulled a couple of her cups out of her bag and her marble. She sat in the middle of the floor, getting annoyed stares from guards as they walked up to her, "Excuse me, could you plea-"

"Would any of you like to play a guessing game? You guess which cup the marble is under!"

Sabine and Zeb broke into the main control room with the gas first and knocked out the men, Twig and the other two kids tackled some of the other guards. Gurds from other rooms began to enter and Sabine used the one detonator Switch managed to hand her and she slid it under the five entering troopers and fired at it.

Switch slammed the cup onto the ground over the marble at the exact same time Zeb had thrown an inside guard up against the glass. All attention from the outside party was towards the girl on the floor. A couple of rounds with the marble managed to humor the guards before the comm finally went off.

"_Everyone on the outside, this is a code red. I repeat, this is a code re- AH."_

The guards turned around but by then the rebels were exiting the glass portion. The eight guards in the room all turned immediately with their blasters in one swift motion, Switch slipped her cups and marble back into her bag and threw Zeb his bo-rifle. The group turned to Switch, who pulled out a smoke bomb and detonated it.

There was blaster fire for a few short moments before the six troublemakers made it out. They hid back in the alley from before, the two kids running off. Leaving Switch, Twig, Zeb, and Sabine.

"Alright Twig, we need to know where Kanan is. Do you know?"

Twig made an unsure motion but pointed to the ground and made a smelly motion with his hand.

Zeb let out an annoyed roar, "I don't smell that bad ya rat!"

Sabine looked at Zeb annoyed before replying, "In the sewers?"

Twig nodded furiously but covered his eyes and motioned around as if he were blind and checking around. The Lasat crossed his arms, "I understand that one. Dark, smelly sewers."

Sabine let out a quick comment, "Sounds perfect for you. You can mask the smell and we don't have to see you."

Zeb glared at Sabine as she laughed and replied, "Sorry, I felt the need to. We should get to him quickly. Who knows what he's doing down there."


	22. The Burden

_**This chapter contains the death of a child. It isn't described to detail, but if someone has a problem with reading that, I recommend skipping this chapter. I will help to catch up someone who skips up to speed.**_

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

There was an overall darkness to the sewers in more ways than one. An eerie feeling swept through the silence, or at least mostly silence. The closer to the south end of the sewers, the louder the sound of lightsabers clashing became.

The lightsabers illuminated the area, sparking every time red and blue clashed, creating a brilliant spectacle of colors and shadows. But no one could have gawked at the sight, for the only two in the area were Kanan and the Inquisitor.

The two remained mostly silent the whole time; they had been at it for nearly 20 minutes. The Inquisitor knew he could have cut Kanan down, but he was trying to tire him out to make sure there was no chance of survival. He was also toying with the Jedi, trying to see if he could provoke some sort of emotional reaction. He could only assume based on the lack of discussion there was no provocation.

Kanan stabbed the lightsaber at the Inquisitor, who parried it and nearly put enough force in to knock it out of the Jedi's hands, but instead something different happened. Kanan shut off the lightsaber, leaving the Pau'an out in the open with his own.

The Inquisitor let out a low chuckle and responded, "Fleeing again, are we Jedi? Honestly, I cannot tell what makes you rebel if you cannot stick around and fight." The Pau'an sensed something and held the lightsaber up to block two blaster shots that Kanan sent towards him.

Unamused and slightly annoyed, the Inquisitor looked in the direction the shots had come from and replied, "And resorting to a blaster as well? Is this what your master taught you? I certainly hope this isn't the strategy you are teaching your padawan."

Feeling the under trained Jedi's emotions provoked, the Inquisitor held up his lightsaber just in time for it to collide with the blue one once more. They exchanged a series of attacks, all blocked by the other party, "Talk about me all you want, but do not insult my master, or my padawan."

The Inquisitor pushed the Jedi back and activated the second side of his lightsaber and replied intentionally antagonistic, "Well then, let us talk about you then. So you currently go by _Kanan, _yes?" the Inquisitor began to spin the lightsaber and swung it towards Kanan with much force as he continued, "So, is the name change to hide from your eventual fate, or to hide from yourself?"

Kanan rolled backwards, away from the lightsaber and back into the dark. He turned off his lightsaber again and tried to do his best to find a new spot to attack from in the shadows. The Inquisitor's spot was perfect, it blocked the exit out, however it was also out in the open. With just the right tactic, Kanan could find a way out of there, but he always seemed to end up fighting the Inquisitor again when he tried.

"You cannot hide, Jarrus, there is nowhere to run and I can sense you, just as you can sense me. The only way you can leave will be if your heart stops beating." The Pau'an seemed to be looking straight at Kanan, despite the shield of shadows, but he was only looking in the direction Kanan had disappeared from. It did not mean he knew _exactly_ where he was.

Kanan did not find it as easy to move around in the old robe the kids had given him in place of his shirt and armor. It was very loose and he was afraid it was too easy for the Inquisitor to trip him up or burn him. Or both if he wanted to really be cruel. Kanan looked past the Inquisitor and at the exit behind him and took a deep breath before charging past.

Kanan went as fast as possible, tripping up and barely managing his usual speed. The Inquisitor swung the lightsaber in the direction he knew Kanan was running towards, but just missed it. The Pau'an let out a hiss and caused the lightsaber to rotate and swung it at Kanan.

The Jedi had made it to the ladder out of the sewer and saw the Inquisitor's lightsaber spinning towards him; he pulled out his lightsaber and deflected it. Sending it back to the Inquisitor. Kanan tried to make it up the ladder in time and heard above him, "Kanan hurry up!" The brunette looked up to see four kids peaking their heads down the sewer but he let out a shout of agony as he dropped down to the floor of the sewer once more.

His foot was burning, his heel could not be felt and he had not sensed the Inquisitor throwing his lightsaber again, it must have that been that moment of distraction from the kids. They didn't mean anything by it when they did it, but Kanan looked down and wished immediately that he hadn't.

His right foot was cut clean off.

The Inquisitor held his hand out and Kanan levitated into the air, choking and looking seemingly helpless as the Inquisitor walked closer, "And now, _Caleb Dume. _

Kanan's face looked horribly disturbed upon hearing the name as the Inquisitor brought the lightsaber up towards his chest, "You, like your masters, will die."

The Inquisitor lunged the lightsaber forward but felt a blaster shot hit his back. Instead of finishing off Kanan, the Inquisitor dropped him to the ground, knowing full well he wasn't going to make it far with his leg anyway, and turned around.

In front of the Inquisitor, where he had turned, stood Sabine, Switch, Twig, and Zeb. Sabine and Switch held blasters out towards the Inquisitor, and Zeb held out his bo-rifle. Twig his behind the group and slowly approached the wall and snuck around the sides to help out Kanan. Zeb shouted, "If ya want him, you gotta go through us."

The Pau'an chuckled and responded, "You are quite wrong, I could kill your rebel leader right now if I so wished, but since you are so insistent on dying first." The Inquisitor walked towards the three, as Kanan shouted, "No, you guys get out of here now!"

"Sorry boss but we're gonna have to say no t' that." Zeb responded as he fired at the Pau'an. All three of the opponents fired at the Inquisitor, and Twig went next to Kanan and motioned that he was going to help. Kanan was hesitant, but nodded. Twig looked at Kanan's foot and grimaced for a moment before looking around. Twig saw something in the water and picked it up, Kanan couldn't see what it was, but Twig put it in Kanan's pouch and then helped up the Jedi. Kanan still had his lightsaber on hand, so he wasn't worried about that.

Twig kept looking back at the Inquisitor to see if he was looking, then he motioned up to the kids up the ladder. All five of them started to help the Jedi make his ascent. By the time the Inquisitor realized what was going on, he turned from the three opponents and growled as he threw the lightsaber again at Kanan. This time, he made certain it was going towards a vital region.

Twig noticed immediately, and tried to motion for the kids above to let go. But when they didn't, Twig pulled Kanan back down as harshly as he could. The two fell and Tackle fell down with them, but he didn't fall fast enough.

There was a loud scream heard before there was deafening silence. The lightsaber hit the ground spinning, having hit a target and not having a way to bounce back. The Inquisitor used the force to call back his lightsaber as he responded, "You make me out to be worse than I actually am. Did your attempts to escape really just cost the life of a child?"

Twig's breathing got heavier as Shortie yelled, "Tackle?!" Twig tried to yell up for the three of them to get out of there, but he couldn't. The boy sat there in tears as he tried to help Kanan up again. The Inquisitor shook his head in disbelief that they were still trying to escape after such an ordeal, before feeling a full force hit the back of his head before he had time to react with the lightsaber.

It was Zeb, and Zeb was absolutely livid. Switch ran over to Kanan and helped him up the ladder. Sabine and Zeb slowed down for a moment to look to find Tackle. When they did, the group quickly brought them all up the ladder and closed the sewer grate.

They were outside the city. Sabine immediately began to get Hera to come and pick them up immediately as the ground circled around the child. Shortie kept shaking Tackle shouting, "Wake up! Wake up! Tackle!"

Twig placed a hand on Shortie's shoulder, but he pushed him away shouting, "Get away from me! If you hadn't pulled him down he'd… he'd!"

"Shortie!" Curls shouted at him, "It isn't Twig's fault!"

The young boy shook him again and cried in a whisper, "Fuden. Fuden… It's Rivi. Wake up."

The rebels looked in horror at the scene, and Kanan closed his eyes before hearing the Ghost approach, Sabine looked at the approaching ship and mumbled, "We need to get in there fast."

* * *

The ship was extremely silent in the spot in space they had escaped to, even though there were plenty more passengers. Zeb was trying his best to keep Curls, Shortie, and Scar, entertained, but it wasn't working so well for Shortie. Switch silently worked on a project in the same room The rest of the ship wasn't doing too much better.

Hera had activated a medical droid she had within the ship and began to patch up the two force-sensitives, specifically on Kanan for that time. They had enough medical supplies to handle what was going on and better yet resources. When they were done working on Kanan, they had moved on to Ezra, when he stirred.

Hera turned to see him sitting up and she turned quickly and responded, "You need to rest up hun. I have you on a heavy sedative and you're still waking up."

The Jedi flexed his foot for a moment and jolted as he went to check it out. Other than a small piece of metal attaching it, it looked like it was exactly his foot. Kanan whispered, "How did-"

"The kid in your clothes, Twig I think they said his name was? Flailed something about recovering it. Although lightsaber wounds aren't exactly easy to work with, I replaced the parts that were destroyed but it was a lot easier than completely rebuilding your foot." Kanan cringed at the idea that a kid had a hold of his foot and managed to carry it that whole way. But then he remembered Tackle, and looked at Hera, "Hera, the kids, are they-"

"Zeb is taking care of three of them, Sabine's got the other one and is working on a way to get the implant off. Chopper is flying the ship."

"And Ezra?"

Hera turned to the sleeping fifteen year old and replied, "He had a similar injury to you believe it or not. But he could have been a whole lot worse. Whatever hit him just missed a major tendon. He wouldn't have been able to walk for months if that were the case."

Kanan looked away from Hera and spoke in a clearly post-traumatic way, "A child died because of me, Hera. One of the kids I promised food is now sitting out there without a brother because of me."

Hera laid Kanan's head down and replied, "We'll talk about it after you get some rest, okay love?"

"But-"

"Please Kanan."

The brunette gave into the demands of the Twi'lek and closed his eyes. After quite some time he eventually did fall back into sleep. Hera quietly went back to work on Ezra's leg in silence, and she closed her eyes and felt the weight of everyone on the ship. She may not have been force sensitive, but she knew everyone was feeling down based on what happened. In some ways she wished she could take it away, but the most she could do was help everyone out in even a small way.

Hera briefly left the room and went around to each and every person, handing each person some fruit and giving them all a pat on the back. It was the most she could do… for now.


	23. The Recovery

_**I feel the need to clear a couple things up [and fortunately catch up those who skipped the previous chapter too]:**_

**1\. Twig did not die. Tackle did.**

**2\. Kanan's foot was cut off, yes. However, Twig [who isn't dead] recovered his foot, so they could fix it up. Kanan does not have a metal foot or anything, but he does have a metal part that attaches it, which may make it seem mechanical, but it is not.**

**3\. Ezra had the back of his heel sliced and just missed having it be cut in a damaging spot. Right now he's patched up. Both Ezra and Kanan therefore have a right foot recovery process that's going to happen... hence the "similar injury"**

**4\. They still do not have the Phantom.**

**5\. And for those who pmed me asking, I don't plan on any of these kids becoming members of the Ghost crew. I was thinking about having Twig be, but I'm slowly leaning towards not having him be a part. But if anyone wants them to be or at least wants them to show up again, let me know.**

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

When Ezra had woken up and tried walking, he kept falling. Hera had gone back to piloting the ship and Chopper was now the one checking up on the two force sensitives. So when Ezra had fallen, of course Chopper was the one he fell on. But instead of getting a nasty stun like he was expecting from the astromech, Chopper actually did his best to help him stand up.

The raven-haired teen went through about five minutes before he could finally walk on his own. Ezra looked at Chopper surprised and gave his thanks, which was returned with an annoyed grumble before he rolled over towards Kanan.

Ezra looked from Chopper over to his master, who was asleep. He noticed Kanan's foot and questioned Chopper, "What happened when I was out?"

The droid roared in an annoyance before pointing towards the door. Ezra rolled his eyes and replied, "Gosh, rust bucket, it was only a question."

When Ezra limped out of the room, the first thing he was greeted with was not what he expected.

There were three of the loth-kids sitting at a table with Zeb. Two of them saw Ezra and immediately ran up to him shouting, "Blink!" and they immediately looked at his leg since he limped in. They kept asking him question after question of what had went on with him, but Ezra was more distracted by Shortie, who was sitting at the table quietly sobbing. Zeb kept trying to tell some sort of joke to get him to laugh but it was all for naught.

Ezra scratched the back of his head and questioned, "Is he afraid of space travel or something? Come on I'm sure Tackle will be jealous when you tell him about it."

There was a huge amount of silence and Zeb gave him a glare that screamed _are you kidding me Ezra?_ And Shortie, who knew Ezra didn't know about what had happened, covered his face and tried his best not to cry any more.

"Geez, talk about a terribly timed comment."

The voice cut through like a lightsaber through a battle droid, and it was instantly recognizable. Ezra turned around and questioned bitterly, "Now what are _you _doing here?"

Switch had walked in from another part of the ship, twirling a credit between her fingers as she replied, "Payment, I helped break Twig out of jail so you could find your rebel leader. And now I'm getting a ride."

Ezra continued to glare at Switch as he questioned, "So what was terribly timed?"

Switch shrugged and replied with no change in her indifferent emotion, "Tackle got killed trying to help out Kanan. Shortie blames Twig, I blame the bald guy."

Ezra's eyes were wide with shock, was the bald guy she spoke of the Inquisitor? And Tackle died? He couldn't believe something like that but his thoughts were interrupted when Shortie got up and yelled, "How can ya tell someone that somebody died like that?!" Curls held back Shortie and Switch rolled her eyes, "Did you want an overdramatic presentation?" Switch moved her headband so her eyes could be more easily seen and showed green eyes filled with faked tears, "T-Tackle was killed in a fight by a big meanie head with a red laser sword."

Ezra took a step closer to Switch and hissed, "Alright listen you loth-swine!"

"Oh I'm a loth-swine now? Very origi-"

"How can you talk about someone who is dead so poorly!"

"I didn't say anything disrespectful about Tackle… originally. And I'm not going to pretend I'm upset about him dying. I'm not. I think how he died was horrific and I'd never wish for anyone to die that way, but I'm not gonna cry over it. People die. It's best not to cry over it."

Shortie screamed at her, "You don't know what it feels like to lose a brother!"

Switch narrowed her eyes at the small child and replied, "But I know what it's like to lose family." She turned her head back at Ezra, "Since you're out and about, Hera had said she wanted to see you… she's in the cockpit."

Ezra continued to glare at Switch for a moment and the girl let out an annoyed sigh and placed her hands on her hips and continued, "I take it you have more to say then?"

The raven-haired boy shook his head and went to walk away towards the cockpit as Switch replied, "Well thanks for wasting 20 seconds of my life."

When Ezra was out of the room and at the cockpit, Zeb leaned towards her from the spot he sat at the table and chimed in, "Could it kill ya to be a little nicer?"

Switch crossed her arms and looked over towards the direction of the cockpit and responded, "I thought I was being very nice… considering."

* * *

Hera had wanted an update on what had gone on with Ezra and Kanan, so he told the story about their journey through the mines, building his lightsaber [he omitted the whole story about the Phantom's near crash and the fact he flew it], and told his story about how he ran across the loth-kids, Switch, and eventually Vice again. He showed Hera his lightsaber, which made her excited for him, but she also told him that if he came anywhere near her control panel with that activated she's throw him out the airlock.

Ezra deactivated the lightsaber and sat down in the copilot chair. Hera continued by saying that as soon as Kanan was up and functioning she planned on going back to Lothal, dropping off the kids somewhere safe, picking up the Phantom, and getting Switch to whatever planet she wanted to go to.

After a few minutes, Sabine quickly walked into the cockpit speaking up, "Alright Hera, how much do you know about removing implants?"

The Twi'lek didn't turn her head as she replied, "I don't know how to remove your special little problem implant. Do I need to call Fulcrum?"

Ezra turned in the direction of Sabine and saw Twig behind her. He looked dizzy and the metal piece across his face looked absolutely ridiculous to Ezra but he didn't say that. Instead he questioned, "Is the implant the thing on Twig's face?"

"Yep." Sabine turned Twig's head to the side and examined the side of it and replied, "I've tried all the tactics I know but I just can't seem to figure this thing out. It's also hard to ask questions when Twig can only reply in yes and no answers."

Twig stepped back and motioned with his hands in a typing format and Sabine answered, "I know I know but I don't have any datapads you can modify to respond with."

Ezra covered his mouth to keep from laughing, "You… you understood what that arm flailing meant?"

Sabine glared at him, "Look kid I've been working for almost a day with him if I didn't understand at least some of what he was saying by now, we'd be in trouble."

Hera let out an annoyed sigh, "Fulcrum call or no Fulcrum call?"

Sabine looked somewhat distrusting of the idea but finally responded, "Alright fine."

Hera then motioned for the three to leave the room so she could call them up. When out in the hallway Sabine questioned, "So how's your leg?"

The raven haired teen lifted it slightly and responded, "No pain… but it's still a little hard to walk."

"Well I hope it gets better and you won't be outta commission for too long."

Ezra raised an eyebrow and put on a cocky grin, "Why, would you miss me?"

"If I missed you I would have missed you while you were gone on your little adventure."

Sabine looked over at Twig who stared silently and confused at the two. At this point Twig wasn't wearing Kanan's clothes anymore and instead was wearing a far bigger shirt than actually fit him. Twig looked between the Mandalorian and padawan and then made a motion with his hands that looked like the two hands were kissing.

Sabine's eyes narrowed as she replied, "No." Ezra laughed replying, "I understood that one." And the Mandalorian rolled her eyes and replied, "I wish you hadn't." Twig let out breaths through his nose, which almost sounded like a laugh, before Sabine pushed him, "Alright kid lets try again one more time."

* * *

For Kanan, waking up and walking was much harder. He still felt pain in his ankle and standing on it was even worse. Chopper did a similar thing with Kanan as he did with Ezra, but when Kanan was finally moving and out of the room, he wasn't limping as bad as Ezra was. In fact, he looked completely normal when he walked. He still felt the pain though; Kanan just chose not to show it.

The room he'd expected to see everyone in was empty, there were a couple of shouts from somewhere else but he found himself heading towards the cockpit. When he got there, he saw Hera, Sabine, and Switch all sitting around Twig, each doing something to the implant on his face. Hera looked up from a list of directions she had and spoke, "Hey love, how's it feel?"

Kanan looked down at his foot and replied, "Hurts." The Jedi looked around the room before replying, "Where's Ezra and Zeb?"

Twig made a very quiet noise in question before letting out an even quieter sound of pain upon Switch pulling something a little too hard. Switch rolled her eyes and spoke, "He has a name too ya know." Kanan raised an eyebrow at this before Sabine turned to Kanan, "We kind of went through this whole day not saying Ezra's name."

"Oh." Kanan hadn't thought about that fact when he said it before he looked at Switch, "Wait, you know his name?"

"Yeah and he knows mine." Switch pulled another part and Twig's pain was quietly heard again. Switch turned to Sabine replying, "He's getting quieter and quieter by the minute."

"I know, that's why we're trying to hurry this up before its too late."

Hera looked at Kanan and answered, "The two are outside with a crate of food trying to feed as many of the street kids as they can find. We figured it was time to let the three kids go. Maybe they're still out there if you want to go see them."

Kanan nodded and headed towards the exit of the ship. He moved a little too fast for his leg to handle yet, and he almost fell, but caught himself in time. When he went down the ramp, he realized the ship was cloaked and after he exited the ramp disappeared and shut. The ghost was invisible.

"Huh, the more I learn about this ship the more fascinated I get…" Kanan turned around and looked to see Ezra and Zeb in one of the alleys. He moved as quickly as he could towards it and the two greeted Kanan with, "Hey."

In the area were a bunch of kids; many of them had parents tagging along. Although Ezra had said not all of them were orphans, he was surprised by the amount that did have parents still. Next to the food crate were his three minions, of which two upon seeing Kanan ran over shouting his name and crowding around him. He laughed a little but focused most of his attention on trying not to fall over.

Although he really hadn't noticed in the sewers, he could really notice their age here. Curls looked to be about 10 years old, and he was the oldest of them. Scar was maybe 9 and Shortie looked only about 7. He guessed that Tackle was possibly 9 from what he remembered. The thought of Tackle put a sour feeling in his stomach, but he looked over at Shortie and realized he was probably feeling a whole lot worse.

Kanan ducked down next to Shortie and spoke up, "Hey."

The child pushed Kanan away from him, but Kanan did not move. He looked around for a moment before continuing, "We've got you your food. That was what I said I'd do… I'm s-"

"Don't say it." Shortie cried out as he hid his face towards the crate. Ezra and Zeb looked at each other unsure of what to do in the situation and instead continued with their business leaving Kanan to his own devices.

Kanan placed a hand on Shortie's shoulder, "I know it's hard. Tackle helped to save my life, I'm eternally grateful for that. I'm sorry I couldn't have returned the favor…" Kanan grabbed some fruit out of the crate and tossed it up into the air and held it in the direction of Shortie, "Would your brother want you to be so sad?"

The small child sniffled and turned towards Kanan and stared at the fruit, "N-no. But I don't want to-"

"Forget him?" Kanan smiled reassuringly and continued, "I'm not saying to forget Tackle. I'm saying that you should look at all the good times you had and have more good times for him."

There was some silence between the two for a long time and Kanan felt like his speech didn't work, then he was immediately hugged by Shortie. It wasn't that he didn't expect it, but he was caught off guard by how quickly it happened. When Shortie stopped Kanan handed him the fruit and a voice was heard from the crowd, "Shortie?"

The little kid's eyes glowed as he shouted, "Mom!" and ran in the direction of the voice. He quickly embraced the one he deemed his mother and the two laughed. Kanan stood up from the place he was crouched down, smiling. The teen and the Lasat were watching the scene grinning as well, "I guess things'll be alright then?"

Kanan continued watching Shortie who motioned over towards them and waved at Curls and Scar. The Jedi nodded and replied, "Yeah, he'll be okay."


	24. The Grudge

_**To the guest reviewer in the last chapter and anyone else:**_

_**I know I ended it rather abruptly when it came to Shortie and Tackle's mom. I honestly didn't want to have to write a mother finding out about her child's death. And I won't ever will and I'm sorry about that. I know it may be interesting to see, but I don't want to stretch the Loth-kid arc longer than it already is. Besides, I had the mother happy because I imagine she would have been happy to have seen at least one of her children safe at that moment [especially since it was the younger one]. And on top of it, I didn't mean to make Ezra seem like... well... an awful human being in that last chapter. I tried to make him seem more like a kid that didn't know what to do, although I should have shown him at least try to comfort Shortie in some way to show that, so I'm sorry about that being misinterpreted. The main purpose of sidelining Ezra from that and having Kanan be the comforter was because it was meant to be one of Kanan's development chapters. Kanan was the one who ultimately had his life saved by all of the kids and I felt it should have been him to deliver the comfort in the end.**_

_**Besides, there's going to be **_**plenty**_** of Ezra development in the future.**_

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

The three specters finished up their food distribution not that much longer later. Hera was rushing them a bit because she wanted to get the Phantom and leave to figure out where they would drop off Switch.

Sabine and Switch were still working on Twig's implant. Fulcrum had sent them the plans for one to try and take it apart with as little damage to the implant as possible. Fulcrum had requested that they bring them the implant so it could be studied and tested so they could find out more about it outside of a written-on-blueprint standpoint.

This meant though that until they got the implant off, Twig was coming along.

Fulcrum had told Hera though to be mindful of the time. It only took about 12 hours for the implant to go from live to dead. There was a blinking green light indicating it was live, which turned red when the implant was considered dead. When it hit the dead phase, the implant could snap off and left only a metal strip across the lip. It was easy to get the strip off, but it meant the vocal chords were completely destroyed. It was easy to get a hold of a dead implant; a live implant was what would be preferred: both for Twig and for Fulcrum.

A live implant would mean Twig could still talk.

Meanwhile, Hera and Kanan were in the cockpit so Kanan could direct Hera to where the Phantom was. When they got there, she told Kanan to hang out in the cockpit just in case they needed a quick getaway, but she said she was going out there to get the ship. She still didn't want Kanan doing anything too extreme with his leg yet.

Hera didn't even have to enter the Phantom to know Ezra and Kanan had damaged her ship. But she could at least admire the fact they attempted to repair it for her. It still didn't mean she was happy about it though, but she went inside the Phantom anyway despite her obvious annoyance. She flew the Phantom up and into the docking part of the Ghost and felt something shift more than normal. The Twi'lek let out a shout of annoyance before climbing down to the main part of the ship.

Ezra was sitting at the table goofing off with Zeb, but Zeb pushed Ezra's attention to Hera, who had her arms crossed and she was giving him a death stare. Ezra gulped for a moment before Hera's stare turned into a smile as she spoke, "Hey Ezra, there isn't anything you want to tell me about the Phantom… is there? You know, just if there were any errors or failures with anything?"

The raven-haired teen's eyes looked everywhere very quickly, except for Hera, before he grinned, "O-Oh course not, Hera! A-at least, nothing happened that I noticed."

The Twi'lek let out a breath as her smile turned to a frown again, "Uh-huh… so you're saying Kanan might know if something is wrong?"

"Exactly!" Ezra replied far too quickly, pointing at Hera with much reassurance. Hera shook her head as she turned to head to the cockpit and spoke in a singsong voice, "Ooooh Kanan Jaaarrus."

The only part of the conversation Ezra and Zeb could hear from their spot was Kanan shouting, "Oh no why is she singing?"

Zeb punched the teen replying, "A'right, infant, ya know you aren't the best actor. What'd ya do?"

Ezra had a scared smile on his face as he squeaked out, "I flew the Phantom and nearly crashed it."

There was a moment of silence before the Lasat started laughing a hearty laugh, "That sounds about right. Nearly cra-"

Ezra covered the lasat's mouth quickly upon hearing a door open. It took a few moments before he realized it hadn't come from the cockpit, but instead Sabine's room. Switch walked into the room with her arms crossed and a not thrilled face. She looked between the lasat and the human before putting her full attention to Ezra, "We need your help."

Ezra scoffed slightly before replying, "_You_ need _my_ he-"

"Look Blink this isn't about me, it's about Twig."

The raven-haired teen nodded at this and ran off to Sabine's room. Switch followed close behind as he entered. Sabine looked up at Ezra from where she was sitting and spoke, "I know you're a little more handy with a wrench than me… we need you for this part."

Sabine held a wrench out towards Ezra, who took hold of it and sat down where Sabine stood up. He looked around at the implant on Twig's face and questioned, "So what am I doing right now?"

Sabine held up the plans and pointed out the points Ezra needed to focus on, he understood and began to focus only on the implant itself rather than his surroundings. Sabine and Switch watched quietly for quite some time before Switch commented, "That is an incredible amount of focus he has on this…. You can see it in his eyes."

The mandalorian nodded at the comment and noticed the efficiency Ezra had been working at as well. It wasn't too long before Ezra stopped and looked over at Sabine, "I finished it."

Switch shook her head, "You can't be, that's impossible."

Sabine walked over to Twig and moved a couple of wires on the device before the green light stopped blinking; it was just a solid green. Sabine then pulled slightly and the implant popped off of the Twig's face. Leaving a metal band. Sabine began to take off the metal band with ease as Switch looked at the instructions and turned to the two, "This can't be right. The instructions say that it should have taken an hour for that step. It only took Ezra ten minutes…"

Ezra looked over at Switch twirling the wrench in his hands, "You aren't the only person who has a skill, Switch."

Switch's eyes narrowed at the teen and replied, "A skill like that is usually acquired by years in an engineering field. How old are you? Fourteen?"

"Fifteen." Ezra replied very quickly, Switch shrugged, "Fourteen, fifteen… doesn't matter. A fifteen year old human should not have the technician skills of a forty-year-old engineer."

The band on Twig's mouth was removed and the very first thing Twig did was moving his jaw in a circular motion. The three stared at the kid in anticipation before Twig spoke, "Did it work?" his voice was sore sounding and almost at a whisper. Twig frowned and replied, "Oh… I guess it did… but…"

"Wow you sound awful, it's like you've got a fever or something." Switch interrupted. The three others in the room glared at Switch who held up her hands in defense, "I'm just being honest."

"Yeah, you're always _honest._" Ezra's voice sounded like they were intentionally meant to attack. And he continued on, "Maybe you should take your blunt _honesty_ and use it somewhere else."

Switch narrowed her eyes at Ezra who turned away from Switch and just stared at the detached device in his hands. Switch opened her mouth to reply but changed her mind and before she turned around and chose to just leave the room. However, as she was leaving the room, the door opened and Kanan seemed to be aiming to enter the room right then. Switch didn't move out of the way and instead ducked under Kanan's arms and turned towards the main room.

Kanan watched her leave for a moment and could feel some sort of hostility between the two. The brunette looked over at Sabine who motioned towards Ezra, who was obviously irritated. Kanan reached out to place a hand on Ezra's shoulder before the teen growled, "If you even try to touch me I'll rip your arm off and feed it to a Rancor."

"Excuse me?"

Ezra jumped and turned grinning, "Kanaaaan, heeey."

Kanan crossed his arms and replied, "Alright whatever grievance you have with that girl is not okay if you're threatening to rip her arm off."

Ezra put the implant down on a table and turned to Kanan fully, "I have no problem with her. She's the one who has the problem with me."

"From the looks of it, it seems to be a mutual problem." Kanan commented in some sort of correction. Ezra didn't want to admit the Jedi was right. He looked away and continued, "It might be…"

"Have you tried working it out between you two, you know? Talking?"

Ezra was quiet for a little bit thinking about it but replied back in defense of himself, "But I don't know what her problem is. She just randomly started hating everyone one day. She's a jerk."

"You didn't answer my question, Ezra."

The raven-haired teen shook his head and went to leave the room but Kanan stopped him, "Ezra hatred towards someone is the path-"

The sound of someone loudly clearing their throat interrupted them, the two turned to see Sabine motioning her head towards Twig, who silently massaged his neck but was watching the two. When he realized Sabine was motioning towards him, he whispered in a raspy voice, "What? Is there some sort of secret I can't know here?" Twig looked between the three and continued, "Wasn't he just going to say hating people is bad?"

Kanan nodded at Twig and grinned, "He put it better than I could: _hating people is bad."_

Ezra looked at Kanan knowing he was right but he didn't know how to explain how he was feeling. Instead of pulling away Ezra pulled Kanan out into the hallway and let the door shut behind him. He looked into the main room and saw Switch and Zeb were having some sort of conversation before he started whispering, "Kanan, I don't know how to explain this, but I've been associating Switch with the words: _evil_ and _enemy_ since I was seven. I don't even know if I can-"

"Rationalize your feelings of hate anymore?"

Ezra lost eye contact and nodded with his eyes closed, "Yeah."

"Then what is the point of hating her if you don't have a reason to anymore."

Ezra crossed his arms and replied, "Look, Kanan, I want to. But every time I'm close to trying to Canna talks with that attitude I can't stand. It's so emotionless and, and joking and I d-"

"Canna?"

Ezra's silence was still filled with the same distress before he replied, "Yeah. That's her name. Canna Drust. But that doesn't matter the point is-"

"Ezra, you're closing out your mind from trying to let go of the hate. Instead you're trying to justify it, which is the opposite of letting go."

Kanan placed a hand on Ezra's shoulder and replied, "How about we take this time to practice meditation and help you to overcome your-"

"Oooh no you don't."

The master and padawan turned around just in time for Hera to hand them both a bunch of tools and reply, "You two get to take Chopper up to the Phantom and repair. my. ship."

Kanan looked at Hera and mumbled, "Hera this is a little more important ri-"

"Oooh no it isn't. This ship needs to be ready and prepared in case something happens so ship maintenance is a priority over your Jedi training. So get your force sensitive butts up there and repair my ship!"

The two looked between each other and let out a sigh of defeat, "Yes, Hera."


	25. The Trackers

**_To the private reviewer who asked to be anonymous: Canna Drust being a name close to Caleb Dume was not intentional, I picked her name because there's a meaning behind it. I didn't think about it until it was pointed out to me. Besides, it's pronounced Can-ah[sounding like "can" and "ah"] Dr-uh-st [sounding like "dust" with an r in there]_**

_**Also I'm sorry to do this to you all, but after this chapter I'm going to take a mental break from Foibles to focus mainly on another fanfiction I just started. I'm not abandoning Foibles by any means but I think I ran in a little too fast and exhausted all of my creative energy for this. I just want to get my mind off of this plot for a little while, focus on another one, and come in with a renewed energy. So here's a really long chapter before a break as compensation for this [like, usually my chapters are 1500-2000+ words… this one has about double that. YEAH].**_

_**Thank you all so much for the support. I have 100 followers as of the time I wrote this, and I couldn't be happier reading all of your reviews and having your support. Love you all~**_

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

"So um… Kanan... How much rewiring do we have left to do?"

Ezra was in the lower part of the Phantom, hanging upside down from one of the pipes so it was easier for him to reach the wires he was working with. He probably didn't have to hang upside down but at the very least it was entertaining for the kid. Kanan was up in the control and piloting panels above.

Kanan kept mumbling for something and Chopper would hand it to him in a complaining manner. Finally one time Kanan looked up and said, "Well if you want to do something else go and check the diagnosis." Which resulted in the astromech almost happily speeding away.

Kanan let out a sigh and shouted back, "As of right now I believe we just need to sync things up but if the diagnosis comes back false again we're gonna have to rewire more."

Ezra let out a loudly audible groan of frustration shouting, "We have the basics down, why can't we just have Hera do the rest, she knows the ship better than everyone else. We've been doing this for hours…"

"_Hey, the internal comm is still on boys. And if you break it you fix it. I'm not sitting up here doing nothing after all."_

Kanan peaked his head down to Ezra and looked at him, "Can you not hang like that with your foot injury if you make it any worse we're going to have to put you out of commission for who knows how long."

The raven-haired teen carefully got down and looked up, "So should we start syncing?"

Kanan was about to respond unsure, but was interrupted by Chopper who was filled with excited beeps and screeches. The jedi listened for a moment before shouting, "Yep, diagnosis cleared."

"Yes!" Ezra waited patiently as Kanan went over to the panel. He pressed down a button and shouted, "Radar!"

"Radar!" Ezra went and looked around in the under part until he found the place he was looking for. He held down a button and moved a wire to a connecting point then shouted, "Online!"

Kanan looked up at the navigation just to make sure and nodded to himself when he saw the radar flash online. He went and pressed another button shouting, "Targeting!"

* * *

Zeb was deeply entranced in one of Switch's games. There were five cups on the table and Switch was moving it around as fast as she could before she finally stopped. Zeb observed all of the cups carefully and it took him a while before Switch went to her usual antagonizing scamming behavior.

"Alright Lasat, if you couldn't keep up with the pattern, delaying time is not going to make things come to light."

"Don't rush me!" Zeb retorted as he continued to examine the cups. After a moment he pointed to the furthest one to the right, "That one."

Switch grinned and lifted the cup with nothing under it. He pointed to another one and she lifted it with the same result. When the third one came around Sabine had walked into the room and while Zeb's eyes did not divert from the cup, Switch turned her head and her hand moved with it in a sliding motion but she didn't say a word to her. She lifted the cup fully after that showing the vacant space.

Zeb let out a roar of frustration as Switch moved both hands to one of the cuts Zeb didn't pick and she lifted it, showing the marble. The Lasat slammed his head on the table and shouted, "Karabast! How many credits is that now?!"

Sabine's eyes widened as she questioned, "Wait, are you two betting?"

Switch nodded and motioned her head towards Zeb, "His choice."

Zeb started examining all the cups for some sort of trick to them but he couldn't find anything before he replied, "What kind of trick is this?"

"Trick? There's no trick. Only strategy. When someone cracks the strategy they will always win." Switch spun the marble around and replied, "One more game?"

"Yeah, if I wanna end up starving us all."

Sabine's eyes widened as she turned to Zeb, "You're betting with the crew's credits!?"

"It's all I had an I figured I'd get double the worth back."

Switch raised her palms up to the air and just grinned a cocky smile. Sabine eyed all five of the cups and commented, "If this game has given you an income then you must have had a lot of practice with it. How long have you been doing this for?"

"Eight years." Switch replied as she started shuffling the cups for her own amusement. The mandalorian and Lasat both reacted similarly, a look of shock before Zeb continued, "Woah wait, 8 years? You've been alone on the street for 8 years?"

Sabine crossed her arms and replied, "It's a very familiar amount of time."

"Well it should be." Switch had not looked up at the two as she shuffled around the cups, "Ezra, Twig, a bunch of us were all orphaned or homeless the same year. It's not that uncommon."

"Why's that?" Zeb replied. He waited for an answer for some time before he pulled away a couple of Switch's cups. She looked up and let out an annoyed breath, "You haven't heard about the Lothal Revolts?"

Sabine finally sat down at the table and replied, "No, Lothal had a revolt?"

Switch put her marble in her pocket and looked at Sabine with her hands folded together, "Lothal has had two revolts. It's loss of resistance left with the second one. The first revolt was a farmer revolt. The Empire came in when Lothal was under an economic crisis offering protection, security, and stability. We took it, unaware of the consequences. They began to destroy people's land and replace it with factories or using the resources for their projects. The first revolt was started then, but there were no deaths that time. Instead everyone who fought was arrested and the rest were left homeless. It didn't affect as many people in cities, but I've heard about rundown villages where people are left starving."

"Tarkintown." Sabine whispered under her breath, Switch shrugged in agreement but didn't seem to know much about it herself.

Switch's face suddenly became a lot more serious and cold as she replied, "There was a period where no one really resisted, but one day voices began to be spread throughout Lothal. We called them the _Voices of Freedom_. They spoke the truth about the Empire, spread out warnings to others, and above all else they promoted something that sparked the adults."

"Really? What was that?" Zeb replied with obviously as much interest as Sabine in the stories.

There was almost a hatred to Switch's voice as she replied, "_Fight for a better future, one that we may not live to see, but one our children can live in._ That was their message. If you can't fight for yourself, fight for your child." Switch's folded hands seemed to grip tighter, "The _Voices of Freedom_ were caught one day. Someone must have given away their location or they sought out their own doom. I don't know. But on that day, the Lothalians, especially the adults, were furious and the word passed of their capture, possible deaths even. And many of the parents went out and rioted. If they were going to restrain the voices, they were going to fight back with fists."

The two rebels watched Switch seem to struggle to remain emotionally composed, but they were in awe over this tale. The black-haired girl's voice was shaky as she continued, "I watched my parents die… and then I learned a valuable lesson that day." Switch took the two cups Zeb had stole, stacked them up, put them in her bag, and then she looked up, "If you can't beat their game, make up your own."

* * *

It was safe to say that anyone who was force-sensitive and working on the Empire's side to catch the rebels was not in the best spirits. The Inquisitor had a wound on his head from the Lasat throwing his bo-rifle full-force at it. Vice was doing better than the Inquisitor by a long shot because even if they hadn't gotten Ezra in their hands, they accomplished their main mission for the time.

Vice stood silently as the Inquisitor went about his business, but at one point he finally turned to Vice, "Could you please give your opinion about the current situation?"

"If you mean the rebels, I personally feel we are going about this a far too long and complicated way. If one little piece doesn't fall into place what do you expect to d-"

The Inquisitor didn't have o say anything, he just stared into Vice's soul, which caused them to shudder and go silent without continuing their statement. He was trying to make it clear that he felt his plan would work and that everything would fall into place soon. The Pau'an took a few steps away and asked another question, "So, with Bridger… are you what he hates the most yet?"

"Master I am all for answering your questions but when would I have gotten the chance to see Bridger's reaction. And I seriously doubt I am, I've had very little time with the kid."

"I suppose I was wrong, this is going at a terribly slow pace. You should be working more productively."

"Oh I'm sorry master, please do forgive me for my lack of effort, now please tell me how you killed Kanan Jarrus, I am certain I can learn from you."

The Pau'an looked at the Acolyte with an anger before replying, "Fair point. However, you know I am trying to not kill the master so quickly."

"Why go after him at all then."

"Do you not need a distraction?"

Vice shook their hooded head, "From Jarrus? Absolutely not. I am certain I could handle the padawan without you being involved in any form."

The Pau'an let out a quiet laugh before turning, "Sure you could. Now tell me, would you like a new task starting now?"

* * *

Hera definitely felt a lot more content when she heard Ezra and Kanan let out their cheers when they completed their fixing of the ship. In fact, she would have laughed if she weren't still a little irritated by their destruction of her ship.

Twig was in the cockpit with Hera. He wasn't really talking and she understood why. Every time he did, his face was filled with sadness because of the state of his voice. They checked just in case he happened to catch a cold, his vocal chords were worn so thin they recommended he not strain them just in case something were to happen. Now, he sat there with a box filled with the devocular implant.

After the cheering stopped and the master and padawan seemed to move elsewhere, Hera turned to Twig and spoke up, "Okay, I don't have many options, but I'm assuming the last thing you want us to do right now is have us leave you on the streets on Lothal."

Twig nodded ferociously as the Twi'lek tried to come up with some sort of plan. Then she heard a transmission try to make it through and she stopped to listen, "Hello? Cannot hear you."

**"_This is Fulcrum. We are in the area but we will not engage, we detect a tracker on your ship and we refuse to have our missions be compromised."_**

Hera's eyes widened as she stopped the ship exactly where she was and looked over at the devocular implant. She knew how to check for bugs but after thorough inspection she knew it wasn't from the implant.

The Twi'lek quickly thought things through before she found her eyes narrowing unwillingly. She looked at Twig and spoke, "If anything happens please say so on the comm… I have to do everything myself these days…"

Hera walked out the cockpit with a straight and unamused face. When she walked by Kanan's room she stopped and knocked. After a few minutes the door opened slightly and Kanan popped his head out, looked at Hera and responded, "Just a few minutes oka-"

The Twi'lek grabbed Kanan's ponytail and pulled him out of the room. Ezra had been in a meditative pose on the ground but ran over to watch and see Hera pulling his master by the ponytail until he pulled away shouting, "Okay is there a problem because I do not need to have my hair pulled like that."

Hera did not say a word as she motioned for the Jedi to follow her into the Phantom. Once there, she looked around and started opening up everything. After some time of silence Hera looked up and replied almost in a hostile way, "So you wreck the outer frame and inner circuitry, and now I find out you managed to get a tracker placed in it."

Kanan's eyebrow rose as he questioned, "Tracker?"

"Yes love, I don't know why we didn't expect this to happen after you left the Phantom lying around for… how many days again? I don't think that matters but the point is you get to help me find this tracker. Why did it now show up in the diagnostics? Or rather, why didn't you see it?"

"It must not be in the typical place they put it… whoever tracked us made sure it was hard to find and detect." Kanan commented as he began searching around as well.

Ezra had continued meditation as Kanan had instructed for quite some time, as his master was gone. But after a while, he couldn't handle it anymore. The padawan left Kanan's room and headed to the main room where Sabine was now sucked into Switch's cup game as well.

With a built up irritation, Ezra walked over as Sabine pointed to the middle cup and inevitably lost. She let out a groan in frustration and Switch noticed Ezra's appearance and spoke up, "Don't give it away Blink, blunt honestly isn't appreciated."

Having a more focused mind after meditating, Ezra managed to not take this jab like he normally would, and he instead turned to Zeb, "How long have you spent on this with her?"

"Me? Two hours. Sabine's been doing this for a half hour now."

"You aren't betting are you?"

Switch looked at Ezra with an emotionless expression, "You don't think I'd put up with this for this long for _free _do you?"

"Of course you wouldn't."

The cup switching began again, but as soon as Switch stopped, Ezra pushed Sabine's hand down and reached for the cup all the way to the left. Underneath it was the marble. Switch swatted his hands away but he kept them out with the palm raised, "The credits."

Switch narrowed their eyes and handed Ezra the credits. Sabine stared in disbelief before looking at Ezra, "How did you do that?"

"It-"

"Hush it." Switch snapped out before putting the marble back and switching around the cups. Sabine pointed to two of them with no marble being left underneath.

When she pointed to the third one, Ezra's eyes narrowed as he watched Switch do her trick and inevitably made Sabine lose. The mandalorian began to examine the cups again before Ezra spoke up, "Your playing is cheap and this game is worse than Sabacc."

"Oh hush, nothing is worse than Sabacc when it comes to digging your own grave… now…" Switch looked at Sabine and grinned, "One more time?"

"Don't do it Sabine it isn't worth it."

"Don't try to tell her what she can and can't do Blink, she's capable of making her own choices in life."

Ezra slammed his hands against the table, "Okay listen up, Canna, I've watched people get suckered out of everything they own from this game of yours for years, I'm not going to watch you bet my family out of house and home."

"Now, now. First… there's no need to pull out real names… really?" Switch crossed their legs and leaned an elbow on the table; "Second, if I bet them out of house and home it's their own problem for not making better life decisions." Switch tossed the marble in the air and caught it as she replied, "Third… _your family_?" Switch scoffed and started to laugh before continuing, "I don't recall you having a _family._"

"I do though, this crew is my family." Ezra spoke hiding the annoyance in his voice. Switch cracked her knuckles and replied, "They may be your friends, but they are not under any circumstances your family."

"Friends are the family you choose!"

There was a steady amount of silence and Switch chuckled almost sadly as she replied, "Well it's a good thing I don't hold myself down with this family nonsense."

Almost as soon as she spoke there was a noise on the comm that sounded like Twig speaking. None of the four in the main room could make it out other than the name, "Hera" which meant Twig needed Hera back in the cockpit. But as soon as he was done speaking there as a loud bang and then more repeated bangs continued.

The rebels realized at that moment they were under attack. Hera slid down the ladder from the Phantom and ran for the cockpit, "ZEB. SABINE. ON THE GUNS NOW!"

The Mandalorian and Lasat ran immediately on call, Ezra stood there with Switch as she tried to stand up. She had her bag slung around her shoulder as she questioned, "What did you do this time?"

"I didn't do anything so why don't you just shut up!"

The shots made the ship shake once more and Chopper quickly rolled down the hallways heading towards the cockpit. The lights flickered for a moment and Switch looked at Ezra and replied, "Calm down, you do realize most of the time I'm joking right?"

"Why do you hate me so much?"

Switch raised her eyebrow and questioned, "What are you talking about?"

"You're always speaking this way, taking advantage of others and myself, how can you stand that? Did I do something wrong to you?"

"Blink when have I ever said I hated you? I have no reason to hate anyone; it's a general wall I put up for everyone. You just happen to be my primary competition most of the time."

The teen didn't listen, he just shook his head and replied, "You can't sugar-coat this, you know what you've done, why should I expect you to not repeat anything you've done."

"Because I'm leaving Lothal to put my past behind me!"

One shot hit the ship extremely hard and resulted in a big crashing noise as the lights flickered again. But this time a huge light fixture on the ceiling began to tumble down towards Switch. She had no time to react or even notice the falling, but the light fixture was heavy enough that it left the possibility of her getting seriously injured or killed.

Ezra stared at it for a moment, debating whether or not it would feel right for him to just let it hit her. Deep inside, he wanted to see her hurt; he wanted to see her suffer. But a bigger part was telling him to let go and save her.

The majority ruled.

Ezra quickly rose up his hands and closed his eyes; the light fixture stopped plummeting and levitated above Switch. The black-haired girl looked at Ezra confused before she looked up and stared in absolute shock at it.

"You know… if you moved it would be a lot less heavy."

The female teen backed away far slower than she meant to and jumped back further as Ezra dropped his hands and let the fixture crash to the floor. He was breathing heavily because of the sudden use of the Force. But at least he was getting better.

Meanwhile, as he was heavily breathing, Canna was staring at him in disbelief.

"Blin- …Ezra… did you just use the Force?"

* * *

Hera ran up to the cockpit just in time to see a giant Star Destroyer right in front of the ship. The Twi'lek let in a deep breath and quickly began to pilot and dodge as best as she could. But because she wasn't prepared, they were surrounded, horrifically. Her shields were not all the way up and by the time she went to, a shot hit the shields and they were down. Hera stared in fear for a moment before she shouted into the internal comm, "Chopper!" the astromech zoomed in just in time and she asked for it to fix the shields.

The droid went to its usual spot and rolled up and tried to fix the shields, but he couldn't fix the damage internally. Hera swore under her breath before she shouted, "You know what you have to do Chop. Sorry…" the droid let out a roar as Hera shouted, "Kanan! Did you find the tracker yet?"

"_**I literally just found it. It was inside the chairs of all places they coul-"**_

"Great! Get to the airlock and let Chopper out!"

"_**What?!"**_

"External damage to the shield generator we gotta send Chopper out there to fix it or we're all goners! Throw the tracker out into space while you're at it!"

Kanan ran from his spot up in the Phantom and slid down the ladder and ran to the airlock. When Chopper caught up, Kanan gave him a pat on the head and handed him the tracker and he shouted, "Go Chopper, be the hero!"

The astromech went in the airlock room before Kanan magnetically sealed it and opened up the door to space. Chopper threw the tracker as far as he could and rolled his way to the damaged shield mechanism. He started performing his droid repairing magic as fast as possible but dodged for a moment when a shot from the Ghost almost hit him.

Although Zeb knew the little droid couldn't hear him, he couldn't help but shout an apology to the astromech and then continued firing at all the TIES.

After a few shocks and wire placements, Hera grinned as she saw the shields back in operation and she let out a cheer, turned them on and spoke through the comm, "Good job Specter 3, make it back inside fast so we can make the jump to hyperspace!"

Chopper made a little salute before he rolled back to the airlock. Hera sent out a transmission to Fulcrum shouting, "This is the Ghost to Fulcrum, we're going to have to rendezvous at another time." Hera let go of the transmitter and replied under her breath, "Unless you like Star Destroyers…"

"_**Acknowledged."**_

When Kanan gave the okay, Hera placed the coordinates and made the jump to hyperspace. After a few seconds, she let out a sigh of relief and then turned her head to the right.

Pressed up against the chair, hugging his knees to his chest in fear was Twig. Although he was an older teen, he looked rightfully afraid of the situation. Hera smiled at him and placed a hand on his shoulder, "You did great. Thank you for keeping a look-out or we would have been in trouble."

Twig nodded nervously before Hera gave him a pat on the back, "Everything'll be alright."


	26. The Order

**Note: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Within this story there will be original characters, but everything else is owned by Lucasfilm and Disney.**

* * *

_15+ Years Earlier_

Within hyperspace traveling from the Outer Rim to the Core worlds was a transport ship with the mark of the Jedi Order on it. It wasn't anywhere near Separatist space anymore and its mission seemed to be nearing completion.

On board, in the back room strapped into chairs so they wouldn't go crazy, was about two dozen children ranging from as young as 2 years old to as old as 4 years old. Some were attempting conversation to each other, some were asleep, and two were recovering from tears they had in their eyes. In the cockpit were two Jedi Knights and two padawan learners. This wasn't necessarily a ridiculous thing to see considering their mission.

All of these children were brand new Jedi Initiates, with agreements from their parents that they could be taken away to train under the Jedi order. But it wasn't so simple for that time. The territory these younglings lived in fell under Separatist flags a year or a little more ago. So the four were assigned by the council to find and transport these children safely to the temple. The parents were obviously saddened at the departure of their child, but they wanted their children to have better lives as Jedi. And for the most part the parents had not fallen for any propaganda that suggested the Jedi were evil. There were a few that did, and the Jedi were forced to leave without them.

This still didn't mean the mission was easy. While there was no actual combat involved, they had to be stealthy, and protect the children as best they could. In case any fighting did happen, there was a team of Clonetroopers with them on board. It never led to any combat.

This seemed for the better, they didn't need the Clones after all… but that's what made the next events so much worse.

Spinning around in their chair impatiently, a padawan looked bored out of his mind and was jittering with impatience. It became distracting, and after some time one of the Jedi Knights spoke up, "Lee Wexnan, control your impatience. You're about as jumpy as a-"

"Master I'll stop being impatient when we aren't babysitting anymore." The padawan cut off his master before he could finish, and spun around faster.

The other padawan grabbed the chair to stop it and replied, "At the very least, stop before it gives me a headache."

Lee let out a low grunt of frustration before turning to the two Jedi knights, "Why are we not out on the field. That's what we usually do! Fight some droids, save the galaxy, why aren't we doing that?"

Lee's master rubbed his temples in frustration, he had repeated why over and over again but it just didn't seem to go through to his apprentice. The other Jedi let out a soft chuckle and placed his hand on their shoulder for assurance before turning to Lee, "Do you understand that this job _is_ important? One of the most important jobs you may ever have?"

"How so?" Lee spoke intentionally trying to be irritating, but the master continued calmly, "We are protecting the future of the Jedi Order, all of these younglings in the back may one day grow into padawans such as yourself, and you might even be their teacher one day. And they will grow into Knights and teach padawans of their own."

Lee turned his chair towards the sliding door that lead to the passenger bay that was filled with the younglings and stared at it for a moment. He thought about being a Jedi Knight one day and teaching his own student, and the idea of it made him chuckle to himself. He was only 15 and had a long way to go, but just the thought gave him shivers of excitement.

Lee's master nodded a thank-you to the other knight, and the other padawan stood up and bowed, "Master Bar-Sey, is it alright if I go to the back and help out the kids? I'm sure the clonetroopers don't want to be the only ones taking care of home-sick younglings."

Mone Bar-Sey nodded at his padawan and she turned away and headed off into the other room. Lee's master turned towards Lee and said, "Maybe you should join her, you could learn a thing or two about them."

"Nah. I'll stay and watch the map as we get further and further out of the outer rim." Lee then pulled his lightsaber out of his belt and started playing with it out of boredom.

"Lee, don't do that, if you activate it, it'll go right through your head. Think before you do things."

Lee lowered the lightsaber to his lap but didn't fully put it away as he responded, "Yes master."

Lee's master let out a sigh and Mone turned towards him and spoke, "You shouldn't looked down on your padawan like that."

"I'm not looking down on my padawan, we just have moments like this where we…"

Mone's expression seemed to quickly turn into a bothered one, he sensed something and the conversation he was in the middle of seemed to all but disappear. Something was off, horribly off.

When he heard the door slide open, he hadn't reacted as fast to his feelings as he should have during the blaster fire. He watched Lee's master fall face first into the control panel, but since it wasn't manual they would be fine for some time, Mone quickly pulled out his green-colored lightsaber and deflected the incoming shots.

When the firing seemed to stop, Mone turned to see Lee with his blue-colored lightsaber out and his eyes widened in fear as he stared at the ground. Mone hadn't turned his chair yet, but when he did, he almost wished he didn't.

On the ground were three Clonetroopers, and they were the only possible ones who could have shot at them.

Then he heard the blaster fire in the other room.

Without much time to react, Lee and Mone ran into the other room frantically and the door opened at their will. Mone's padawan had out her yellow lightsaber and was deflecting the best she could, with tears in her eyes as she refused to look at any of the younglings. But she couldn't last. Before they had even entered the fray, a shot went through, the padawan fell, and the Clonetroopers went trigger crazy, firing at her and making sure she was dead.

Lee and Mone ran into the fray and had a hard time taking down the Clonetroopers, who were shooting at them, and shooting at the younglings too. Mone looked over his shoulder and shouted, "Lee, don't worry about the troops, protect the younglings!"

Nodding at the Jedi, Lee backed away from the clones and spent most of his energy on deflecting the shots away from the younglings. Many of them stirred, frightened, and a couple got out of their seats and out of range hoping to hide, but the clones got them when they had no protection.

It was a nightmare that didn't seem like it would end. Lee picked up the downed padawan's lightsaber and turned it on and initiated the best dual combat he could, still protecting the younglings. But at that point Mone had only gotten three of the six troopers.

A blaster shot hit Mone's back, and he fell to the ground. Lee watched in panic, and abandoned his spot in order to save Mone. He leaped over him, and plunged the lightsaber straight into the clone's chest. He hurdled the other lightsaber behind him at another clone, which connected. When he pulled the lightsaber out and the other one rebounded, he realized he was now the attention of the last clone, who was evening out between firing at Lee, and firing at the younglings. Mone held his hand out and pushed the clone back with the force, and Lee ran at it and decapitated it.

The ship was then eerily silent, with the exception of a crying youngling.

Lee looked around horrified at the scene, with tears in his eyes that he couldn't hold back no matter what emotional training he may have had. Mone stood up, holding his back in pain and barely managing to stand. But he was alive, and he knew he could live on, which he secretly wished he could have traded. He wished all of the younglings were still alive even if it meant he had to fall.

Mone had not a clue what was going on, but made sure to get out of hyperspace as soon as he could. He could not figure out why the clones would have attacked. He tried paging nearby outposts with no replies. He tried calling the council to no avail. He needed to know what to do; because despite being a Jedi Knight for many years, he had never had such a thing happened.

The temple was telling him to return because the war was over, but based on what happened on that ship, he refused to go. And was grateful he didn't when he received a message from Obi-wan Kenobi about the Jedi order. He meditated over this, holding back his own tears to keep his mind clear.

Mone walked out to Lee, who was trying his best to console the surviving younglings, which was unfortunately not very many, and he placed a hand on his shoulder and spoke, "We need to leave this place and hide. I do not know if we can take these younglings back without putting them in danger."

Lee turned and hissed, "We shouldn't hide! We should fight back!"

"Lee."

"The Jedi Order is not filled with cowards! We shoul-"

"The Order is gone, Lee Wexnan!"

The padawan turned to see the older master, his eyes holding back tears, as haunted as he. He wiped his eyes and looked Lee straight in the eyes, "We need to protect these younglings, Lee. If the Republic is gone, and the galaxy is against us… I don't want these children suffering. And if we stay here they will come and kill us. Lee, I know you may think yourself too young, but you need to look out for your brothers and sisters right here in front of you, and know we aren't hiding because we are cowards, we are hiding to protect those who need it."

Lee looked at the younglings and back to Mone, he breathed in and tried to maintain composure. It was clear that he understood the weight of the situation, but he was under experienced. He bowed to the Knight and responded, "I understand, Master Bar-Sey."

Before anyone had reached the ship, the survivors on board the passenger ship left in an escape pod and made their way to a place they assumed they could hide. They were in mourning, but pretending to be strong. For the younglings.

Out of the 37 passengers, Two Jedi Knights, Two Padawans, Nine Clonetroopers, and Twenty-Four younglings... only five passengers survived: A knight, a padawan, and three younglings. All had to change their names to protect their identities. And while the three younglings could just change their last names and be fine. Mone Bar-Sey changed his name to Que Sun-Chare, and Lee Wexnan became Jess Leenan.


End file.
